And the New
by Emma CS Me
Summary: "I'll see you again soon, won't I? Once you're a knight of the Kingsguard."/"Yes. You will. That's what Sansa says. You'll be a queen, and she'll be a princess, and I'll be your knight!" - Years later, that's true, but it's more complicated than that. (In which fem!Jon becomes Robert's second wife, and Bran carries on his dream of being a knight.)
1. The Book of the Maiden

**Author's Notes:** And I am finally getting around to putting my multichapter fics on here! So, this fic has two big AU conceits to be understood:

1\. Jon is a girl.  
2\. Cersei is dead.

Also, this thing is practically in experiment in how many crack pairings you can fit into a fic that isn't really at all cracky. You'll see more what I'm talking about in later chapters.

Trigger warnings: domestic violence, marital rape, referenced character death, possibly others?

* * *

 **The Book of the Maiden**

Jo could not get her hair to sit properly.

She'd long since given up on getting her wild curls to form neat northwoman's braids, the way Sansa's could – her hair was too unruly, when she tried it stuck out at all angles and left her looking like a half-groomed poodle – but she should have been able to tie it back at least, without all her curls trying to make their escape. She should have been able to, but she wasn't.

"Jo, your hair looks lovely. Can we get a move on?"

She groaned. "Shut up, Robb," and then she pouted in the mirror. "I don't know why I'm putting in so much effort. It's not like the king is going to pay any attention to the bastard daughter hidden away at the back of the crowd."

"You're meant to stand in the second row, aren't you? With Theon?" Robb said, and yes, the fact she would have to stand next to Theon Greyjoy throughout was possibly the worst thing about the day. Robb walked over, clasping his hand on her shoulder. "Come on, don't be like that. You know what, if it makes you feel better, I'll stare at you through the whole thing. Everyone'll think it's a bit weird."

That made her laugh. "Thanks Robb," she said.

"Now come on, if my mother discovers you made me late to meet the king, she'll actually have you flayed alive."

She might do that anyway, Jo thought, but she sighed and gave up on her hair, smoothing the wrinkles in her dress. It was the best dress she owned, though not as nice as the one Arya had been forced into, and of course, nothing near the monstrosity every seamstress in Winter Town had been making for Sansa for the last three months. They said the king was to betroth the crown prince to her, and Jo was glad – that was all Sansa had ever wanted, after all. Jo'd never been the type to collect fancy dresses; not that her father wouldn't buy them for her if she asked, but she didn't like to be a bother, and didn't want to watch Lady Catelyn sneer at the bastard putting on pretenses of being a lady. Still, it was the king. She wanted to look her best.

* * *

Bran was excited. Not as excited as Sansa, granted, but still excited – the king! At Winterfell! With all his knights! Bran had asked his father about getting one of them to take him on as a squire, he just laughed and ruffled Bran's hair, and said "We shall see." Bran thought that meant no. But still – he was sure he could talk Father into it, so long as he found the right knight to squire for.

The king took so long to arrive though. Robb and Jo showed up in a rush, like they were afraid of being late, only to have to wait for ages anyway. Arya showed up even later, and the king still wasn't there. Bran's feet were starting to hurt, but still, he couldn't bear the thought of not being there the moment His Grace finally did arrive.

Eventually, all the horses and servants and squires and the like were in place, and the king's own carriage drew into view. Bran stood up straight and puffed out his chest. He knew he was young, but still, he wanted to look as much like a knight as he could when the king first saw him. First impressions count, Mother always told him.

The king went to Father first, of course. The regular kingly courtesies were observed, of course, before he and Father laughed like old friends. Which they were. Bran got distracted, he had to admit, when he spotted Ser Jaime Lannister – the Kingslayer. Bran had heard stories about him, of course he had, mostly ones about how little his father liked him. Still, there was something interesting about the man. Maybe he'd squire me. After all, how many offers could he get?

There was something interesting about him, but also something sad. Father's stories never mentioned that. But he might not have seen it, it might only have come about when Ser Jaime's sister, the Queen, died.

Bran was dragged out of his reverie by the king leaning down to talk to him, grinning with a red face. He did not seem too sad over his queen's death. "Show us your muscles," the king said, and Bran did, and while he may have been getting ahead of himself, he thought the king looked impressed. "You'll be a soldier, boy," he said. Bran decided he liked this king.

King Robert made his way through the introductions, until he got to the end of the line. Then he stopped, and frowned, peering over Sansa's shoulder. Bran saw her look taken aback, and out of the corner of his eye, Father's spine stiffen. "...Lyanna."

Everyone looked around, bewildered, trying to figure out who the king was just referring to. Bran had to strain his neck to see it, but he managed, and found the king staring over the Starks' heads into the row behind, at Jo. It was confusing.

The king burst through to reach her, and everyone, on instinct, made way for him. Theon Greyjoy jumped a couple of inches back, and Bran thought he looked rather frightened. But Jo stood her ground, even as King Robert stood little more than an inch from her.

Father coughed, sounding very uncomfortable – Bran couldn't help but think he looked frightened too. "Robert, this is my natural-born daughter," he said, slowly and deliberately. "Her name is Joanna."

"Joanna," the king echoed in a whisper, the first syllable floating away on the breeze. "A beautiful name."

Out of the corner of his eye, Bran saw Ser Jaime flinch.

"...Thank you, Your Grace," said Jo, who clearly was not expecting this attention. Then it was her turn to flinch as the king reached forth and wrapped one of the curls she could not tie back around his finger, then tucked it behind her ear. But she didn't move away.

Bran wasn't so sure he liked this king anymore.

They all waited for King Robert to say something else, but he didn't, he just stood there a long moment, with Jo looking ever more uncomfortable and Father balling a fist. Bran didn't really understand what was going on.

Eventually, the king stepped back. "Right, let's not stand about here freezing our balls off all day!" he said, and Bran giggled.

Then they started to move back into Winterfell's warm halls, Theon leaning toward Jo and whispering "Gee Snow, if I knew all it took was a crown to get my hands on you, I would have gone looking for one years ago!" That made her punch his arm, as hard as she could get away with.

As they walked inside, Bran noticed how Father's face was still set in the stern mask of Lord Stark, and he did not relax.

* * *

The king's arrival was strange and unsettling, but everyone seemed to forget about it right afterwards – everyone but Jo. Lady Catelyn did her best to keep her hidden away throughout the visit, which for once she was thankful for, although she knew the woman wasn't doing it for her sake.

When she wasn't hidden away she saw the king staring at her, and tried as best she could to stick by Robb's side – although she wasn't sure how much Robb could do to protect her if anything did happen. Probably nothing would happen, the king had probably forgotten about her already, but he was known for his appetites, and years living with Theon Greyjoy had taught Jo that plenty of highborn men view bastard girls as nothing but born whores. Although Theon had never taken it beyond drunkenly asking for a kiss and calling her a bitch when she said no, as bastard or not, even he wasn't stupid enough to try and force anything upon his captor's daughter.

However the king would have no such reason to be afraid.

It was toward the end of the visit, maybe the third last day, when Jory Cassel came running up to her to tell her that Father had summoned her to his solar. That made her frown. Robb was always being summoned to Father's solar, but Jo, being both a bastard and a girl, had no reason to concern herself with matters of official business. Some speck of pride flared in her chest at being called to do so anyway, even if she had no idea why.

Once she got there, Father was sitting at his desk, stern frown upon his face. He wasn't looking at anything in particular, and when he saw her, he did not smile. "Joanna," he said, calling her by her full name. "Please sit down."

Her heart raced, and for some reason, she feared she is in trouble. She had no idea what she'd done that she could possibly be in trouble for, but she was sure Lady Catelyn could have thought up something (perhaps that was being unfair on her stepmother. It was not as if the woman made things up to get Jo in trouble – she was just always on the look out for any tiny infringement Jo might make). "Is something wrong, Father?" she asked.

He shook his head. "No, not wrong as such, just..." he trailed off as he drummed his fingers across the desk. It did not soothe her nerves. "I'm not quite sure how to say this."

That was odd. Father was so sturdy, so solid, so much the Lord of Winterfell – the Lord of Winterfell was never lost for words.

"Well, speaking is generally considered a good first step," she smiled softly at him. Finally, he smiled back.

"It's Robert. His Grace," Father said. "He's come to me with a proposition. About a marriage."

"Sansa, I know, she's to marry the prince," Jo said, too quickly – quickly enough she worried she sounded bitter. "I mean – don't get me wrong Father, I'm happy, for her and for you, for the whole house – but what does it have to do with me?"

Father shook his head again. "Not Sansa," he said. "And not the prince."

Jo was bewildered.

"Robert wants to marry you," Father said, looking away as he did so. "He was very insistent upon it. He said the second he saw you, he knew you were the only woman he could wed again for."

Her jaw dropped open. The king?

Immediately, rage flamed in her breast. It was a cruel joke, it must have been. Lady Catelyn set him up to it, or maybe Sansa, spiteful because the king hadn't arranged her betrothal yet, or Theon, getting his own back for her rejections. Because it wasn't true. It couldn't be.

But Father wouldn't lie to me. Which left only one possibility, one that happened to be impossible. "But – why?" she finally choked out. "I'm just a bastard girl. Why would the king want to marry me?"

"Because you look like the only woman he ever loved." Father said that so quickly, she couldn't react, and a long silence fell. Of course, her aunt Lyanna – King Robert called her that name, although in the moment Jo fooled herself she just misheard the first syllable. She'd always been told she looked like her aunt, although never in Lady Catelyn's earshot. She'd always been told what a beauty her aunt was, beautiful enough to start a war, to destroy a dynasty, and she'd had to deflect the affections of enough squires and stablehands to believe it.

Father gave a long sigh. "Look, Joanna, I understand why you wouldn't want to – I don't want to force you into anything–"

"No, Father, I–" she hesitated over her words. Did she want to marry the king? When he spoke to her in the courtyard, the times she caught him staring at her across the halls, it made her so uncomfortable. But she assumed he was just a lusty nobleman, wanting it because he assumed it would be easy to get it. He was hardly the sort of man she ever imagined herself marrying: he was so much older than her, and he was fat, lecherous and drunken.

But he is the king. Had she not always dreamed of this, deep down? Her beauty enchanting some nobleman until he could not think to marry another woman, he would have her or he would perish? She would never say as such out loud, but she had as many foolish dreams as Sansa, of some gallant knight making a noble lady of her – not just a noble lady, but a Queen. In her more spiteful moments, she had dreamed of visiting the Riverlands, somehow, and working her way into the widowed Hoster Tully's heart, just to see the look on Lady Stark's face when she had to call Jo Mother. But wouldn't it be better to see the woman have to call her Your Grace?

Some part of her flinched at that. She didn't want to wed just to spite her stepmother. But would this not be the best thing she could do for her Father too? He could marry Sansa to Prince Joffrey, sure, but Sansa hadn't even bled yet, Joffrey was not much older than her, and no-one in the royal company spoke well of the young prince. Who knew what could happen between now and the wedding day? Besides, Joffrey would be king one day, but Robert was king now – she could give her father something Sansa, the trueborn daughter, could not: the king himself for a son-by-law. She had always feared her marriage would be nothing more than an excuse to be rid of her, to foist her upon whichever of his lords had a bastard of his own to deal with, or maybe if she was lucky, the seventh son of a minor lord whose father didn't like him very much.

But like this, she could bring her father more honour than all his trueborn children combined.

So what if the king was a lecherous old drunk? It was not as if she ever had any delusions she would marry a fairytale prince. She wasn't Sansa.

"I think I want to marry the king," she said, doing her best to sound like a queen – not that she had any idea how queens sounded. Father frowned.

"Are you sure, Jo?" he asked. "Robert – I love the man like a brother, but–"

"He is a drunkard and a philanderer. I know that," she said. She did not want him thinking she was going into this as a naïve child. "But there are worse things to be. Surely, this is a better match than I ever thought I'd get? The bastard and the king. I owe it to the minstrels of the world to accept."

Father smiled at that, but then looked at her very carefully. "I just want you to be safe, Joanna," he said. "Safe and happy."

Safe and happy. He had always made sure she was the former, no-one could fault him on that, but the latter... "I know, Father," she said. "And I want the same."

Would this not fix all her father's problems? His bastard child tucked safely away in enough riches to keep her happy for the rest of her life, no longer an open wound between him and his wife, no longer a puzzle piece that had to be slotted in when trying to arrange lives for the trueborn babes, the one stain on his perfect honour finally redeemed. Jo wanted to do that for her father. Gods, how she wanted it.

"You are so young, Joanna," Father said. "Are you sure you're ready to make such a decision?"

"I'm not a child!" she said, all the authority slipping from her voice. She couldn't help but think she sounded exactly like a child. "I bled years ago!" More like a year and a half. "I'm almost fifteen now. How old were you when you married?"

"Seventeen," he said, a sad look crossing his eye. He examined her very carefully once more, and the hair on the back of her neck prickled. She had the odd feeling he wasn't telling her something. "Very well. I'll tell Robert you've accepted his proposal... if that's what you want."

"It is, Father."

He sighed, and stood. She wasn't quite sure what he was doing, but when he walked around behind her, she stood to face him. Gently, he tilted her head towards him with his finger, and smiled. "I still remember you as a babe, Jo," he said. "So tiny, so helpless, just a squalling bundle in my arms. I was barely more than a boy, I had no idea what to do with a child, and I knew how much trouble you would cause me... and I knew you would be worth it."

Her heart ached. The words were so kind, and yet, she couldn't help but know he would never dare say them if Lady Catelyn was listening. So she decided to try her luck. "Father," she said, voice almost shaking, "do you regret having me?"

A moment of silence, and then he pulled her close and kissed her brow. "I could never," he said.

* * *

"Bran!"

He jumped at the feel of Sansa's arms squeezing him. Sansa wasn't shy about giving hugs, but they were always gentle, ladylike ones – unless she was really excited. "Um, hi?" he said as she finally released him. "You're happy?"

"Haven't you heard?!" She beamed so wide it could have split her face open. "Jo's going to marry the king!"

Bran blinked. What?

"I can't believe she's going to marry that stupid old king," Arya pouted, and Bran suddenly realised she was there. "It's Mother's fault. I bet Jo only agreed because of her."

"It is not!" Sansa said. "Isn't it romantic? The king could have any noble woman in all the seven kingdoms, but the only woman to steal his heart is a humble bastard girl from the North. Of course, he'll have to legitimise her before the wedding, but–"

"Wasn't he already married once?"

"Shut up, Arya!" said Sansa. Bran just kept blinking in confusion. No-one had told him any of this. "Why can't you see how good this is, for all of us? Jo's not just a bastard anymore, she'll be queen–"

"And then you'll be able to love her?!" Arya's face started to turn red with rage.

"That's not what I–"

"She's going to leave us," Arya said, sounding on the edge of tears.

Sansa sighed. "Only for a little while," she said, like it was something very obvious, "but when I marry Prince Joffrey, and Bran joins the Kingsguard, we'll all be together again in King's Landing–"

"What about me?" Arya asked.

"Well if you marry a Crownlands man too–"

"I'm not marrying anybody!"

Sansa sighed again and looked to Bran for support, support he was entirely too scared of getting dragged into this argument to provide. "Come on, Bran. Won't it be nice?" Sansa smiled at him. "Jo as queen, me as princess, you as our gallant protector."

Bran hesitated. Yes, it did sound nice. But he wanted to talk to Jo about it first.

* * *

Jo had to pack quickly – the king still wanted to leave in three days. Lady Catelyn helped a lot, and was kinder than she had ever been, whether out of remorse or fear of what Jo would do once she had the power of all the Seven Kingdoms behind her, she wasn't sure. Of course, Jo would never actually do anything to hurt her stepmother – to hurt one Stark was to hurt them all, and she could never do that – but she found some measure of revenge in having the woman fear her, if only a little.

A knock came on the door. She turned and saw little Bran standing there, and she smiled. "Hi Bran," she said. "Come to say goodbye?"

Her siblings had slowly come to make their farewells as they'd found out. Arya had begged her not to go, of course, and made her heart ache. Robb told her how happy he was for her, and how king or no, if Robert thought to put a curl on her head out of place he'd regret it, and then held her tight and buried a sob against her neck. Sansa merely sought to provide Jo with all the etiquette lessons she'd need for King's Landing, or as many of them as she could cram into three days – honestly, most of it Jo had already learned by observing Sansa and her mother, but she said nothing. Sansa was always the most distant of her brothers and sisters, and it was nice to receive the attention.

"Apparently," Bran frowned. "Are you really going to marry the king?"

"Aye, I am." Even saying it out loud, it didn't feel real.

"Well that was sudden."

That made her laugh. "I know, I know. Hence why I have to pack so fast," she said. "It still feels like a dream. Why would the king want to marry me?"

"Because you look like Aunt Lyanna?" Bran said. Then he sighed. "Jo, are you – sure this is a good idea?"

Of course I'm sure – it has to be, she wanted to say. But the words died in her throat. Was she sure? She didn't really know the king, and everything she knew about him did speak to him being a brilliant husband. The only thing she liked about the man was the fact he was king, and she didn't like herself for that, she didn't want to be the woman who married for wealth and power alone.

But no, that wasn't why. She did it for her father, for her family. Was it not her duty as Ned Stark's daughter to secure him the best marriage she could?

She looked away. "Well, it's not like I'm going to get a better offer," she muttered.

"Don't say that!" When she looked up, Bran had walked over to her. He was so little, but she was on her knees to pack, so they met each other eye-to-eye. "There are other men you could marry, brave men, handsome men, young men–"

"And men your lady mother wouldn't find fit to clean out Winterfell's chamberpots." Bran flinched at that, and Jo felt a pang of guilt. But he had to understand. "I don't – I don't want to be the bastard girl, foisted upon a man as far away as possible and then forgotten about," she said. "For some reason, the king himself wants to marry me. I'd be stupid not to say yes, wouldn't I?"

Bran was still frowning, but he seemed to accept this. "I'm going to miss you," he said.

She smiled. "I'm going to miss you too, little brother." And then she pulled him in close to hug him. She was going to miss him. She was going to miss all of them: Robb and his never-ending support and affection, Arya and her absolute adoration, Sansa and her shy smiles she could never quite hide, little Rickon and his beaming grin. She would even miss Theon Greyjoy, in a way, or perhaps that was just her emotions riding high talking. His behaviour had not changed: he'd come and asked for that kiss again, before it became a treasonable offence, then just laughed and raised his hands in surrender at her angry glare. Ass, she'd thought, but she'd horrified herself with how fond it sounded.

She would not miss being the bastard of Winterfell, but she would miss Winterfell horribly.

"But hey, I'll see you again soon, won't I?" she pulled back to grin at Bran. "Once you're a knight of the Kingsguard."

A determined look came over Bran's face, and Jo suddenly realised how much he was Robb's brother, and Father's son. "Yes. You will," he said. "That's what Sansa says. You'll be a queen, and she'll be a princess, and I'll be your knight!"

"Good." She ruffled his hair. "Someone's got to keep this fat drunk king in line for me."


	2. The Book of the Warrior

**The Book of the Warrior**

Bran arrives in King's Landing and is finally, officially, made a knight.

He is not quite fifteen, and of course he is not of the Kingsguard yet, he hasn't proven himself yet, but everyone in the Eyrie was sure it would happen – not just when they spoke with him, but when he climbed the walls to listen to castle gossip, they all admired his skill. Besides, he is the Queen's brother, and given Ser Jaime is now Commander of the Kingsguard – since Ser Barristan Selmy died in his sleep, and many were displeased with that appointment – they are afraid House Stark would take it as an insult if their Queen's brother was denied the next availability.

But Bran doesn't want to become a knight of the Kingsguard because he is Jo's brother, or Father's son. Not that he doesn't love them both, but he wants to earn it.

The conversion ceremony doesn't happen until he reaches the city. Which is good, because he wants to delay it as long as possible – this is the one part of his path he regrets, that he must convert away from his father's gods, although he can hardly say it's a betrayal of his family, to choose his mother's instead. Still, there is a latent well of guilt there, a sense of opportunity lost. Last time he visited Winterfell, he went to the godswood, possibly to ask forgiveness – but when he got there, it seemed the Old Gods understood completely. _Go_ , the weirwoods told him, _meet these new gods. Your sister is waiting for you._

Yes, Jo is the queen, and he will be her knight. He will probably even see Princess Sansa more often – the Crownlands are closer to Dorne than the Vale, let alone the North. It is not the dream they once had, of all being together in the capital, queen, princess and knight, but it is close enough. The things Sansa writes about Quentyn are sweeter than anything anyone has ever said about Prince Joffrey. So it is probably for the best.

The Sept of Baelor is breathtakingly beautiful. For a long time Bran just stares, up at the ceilings, through the windows, at the statues, anything and everything speaking of the grandeur, the wonder, the clarity of the new gods. He gawps like the fish on his mother's banners. The High Septon has to cough to get his attention, and he flushes with embarrassment, and is glad they heeded his request not to do this in front of an audience.

"Are you ready, Ser Brandon?" the old man asks, and what a thing to hear, _Ser Brandon_. "Once the ceremony is over, you can journey to the Red Keep, and meet your sister."

And so Bran Stark walks forwards, towards new gods and a new life.

* * *

The whole day passes with far less ceremony than he expects. He thinks the Red Keep will hold some sort of procession for him – not that he's really looking forward to it (really, he isn't) – but no, the guards merely let him in and tell him the queen will see him shortly. But Bran finds himself waiting a bit longer than shortly, sighing and relaxing into the fine furniture, drifting into reverie. It's hot in the capital. He was warned he wouldn't be used to the climate, though he didn't pay those warnings much heed – he grew up in Winterfell's hot springs after all. But this sort of heat – dry and permanent, blaring through the windows – is new. He pulls uncomfortably at his collar, wishing Jo would just show up already so he can go take a cool bath. It's not like her making him wait like this. She usually tries so hard to please everyone–

"Hello!"

"Gah!" Bran is shaken out of his reverie, and almost out of his chair, by a grinning face popping up in the window. A small girl, no older than six, climbs through it. Silhouetted by the sunlight he can only vaguely make out the shape of her, and her long blonde hair. One of Queen Cersei's children, he thinks at first, but no she's too young for that. "Are you my uncle Bran?"

"Um..." He blinks and she starts to come into focus, her silver-gold hair, her violet eyes, her grin. Is this one of Jo's children? Bran knows she has three. But she doesn't look anything like Jo – or Robert. He knows Robert had a Targaryen grandmother, but – how did so much exuberance ever survive contact with Jo's blood anyway? Then again, she got her climbing skills somewhere.

"I think so," he says, eventually.

"Yay!" And suddenly he is ambushed by tiny arms thrown around his neck, and the tiny girl they're attached to jumping into his lap. This girl certainly has the confidence of a princess. "Mother's told us so much about you, my sisters and I have been so excited, of course the stupid king told us we had to stay in our rooms, but I snuck out!" And her grin falters a little then – like she hopes he'll be proud of her, but fears she'll be in trouble. Bran barely knows this girl, but he'd say he leans more towards the former. "I'm Betta, by the way. Well, Robetta, but everyone calls me Betta."

Robetta, that is one of Jo's three children – Bran knows she has three daughters, Robetta, Anna and Daeria. He's never met any of them. Last time he saw Jo, it was while she was carrying her first child – this child – and she and the king returned to Winterfell, and Mother looked like she'd sucked a lemon while everyone else cooed and fawned over the new queen's belly. King Robert made Father promise he'd come to King's Landing once the babe was born, which Father did promise, but when the babe came Robert wrote and told Father it was important he stay in the north, for no readily apparent reason. Bran thought the king might bring the young princess to them instead, but he didn't, nor did he with the next two babes. Bran could never understand why.

Looking at this smiling girl, this strange ghost of the Targaryens, Bran starts to get an idea.

"Betta?" A voice rings out and the girl immediately looks up in a panic, before she relaxes as she places the voice. "Where in all seven hells have you gone, if your father finds out you're missing–"

The door swings open and a grin spreads across Bran's face as he sees the figure emerge, the mop of dark curls and anxious, sullen look – Jo. She's put on weight, which he supposes is what happens when you have three children, and for a second he thinks she's shrunk somehow, but no, he's simply gotten taller. "Bran," she says when she sees him, sounding breathless – like she can't believe it. Then she remembers her daughter. "Jo, what are you doing here?"

"I climbed out of my room, Mother, and in here," Betta explains. "I'm getting really good at it!"

"I've told you I don't like you climbing–" Bran hates to say it, but she sounds just like Mother. Little Betta's grin crumbles, and she stares down at the floor, knotting her hands together. Jo sighs. "Sorry. Just, you know how the king feels when you go wandering?"

"I know. I'm sorry," Betta mumbles, and Jo bites her lip before reaching over and pulling the girl to her side.

"Nevermind. Let me introduce you to your uncle Bran, hey?"

"She sort of introduced herself," Bran finally gets the chance to chime in, and he looks up at Jo – and grins. A pause, and the slowly, she grins back. He stands up, and she blinks at him.

"Okay, you got tall," she says. Indeed he did. He remembers Jo as being so big, but he looms over her by almost a foot now. "Too tall. Stop that."

He laughs. "No," he says, and for good measure, sticks his tongue out. She laughs, and it's like he's seven years old again – Betta giggles as she hovers about their feet.

Bran is surprised by another pair of arms wrapping around him – not tiny ones, but strong, almost matronly ones, although Jo's really not that old. "Gods, I missed you little brother," she mutters against his chest, and while Bran's a little taken aback, he's quick to return the embrace.

"I know, I missed you too. We all did." And as Jo pulls back, his curiosity gets the better of him. "Why didn't you come visit. The king said you would, once the baby was born, but then – he wouldn't even let Father visit you. Why?"

Jo hesitates over her answer, and the looks up as a voice booms through the corridor. "Joanna?! Where has that brother of yours gotten to? If you're hiding him from me–"

She steps away as the door opens again, her body stiffening. Bran just looks on as the king bursts through – drunker and fatter than Bran remembered him, and he remembered him as drunk and fat – and greets him with a wild grin. "Ser Brandon!" and Bran is pulled into a third embrace, this one more crushing than the previous two combined, the stench of wine overpowering. "Been looking for you all over this fucking castle. Should have had one of those bloody ceremonies Cersei always insisted on, but Ned never could stand that bullshit. Gods, you look just like him at that age."

Bran doesn't, really. He looks more like Father than Robb or Rickon does, but he still probably takes more after his mother – Jo and Arya are the ones who look like Father, despite being girls. "Thank you, Your Grace," he says anyway, as the man pulls back and actually looks at him properly.

"Hello Father!"

Robert's attention is called to his daughter, grinning up at him hopefully, then looking away and knotting her fingers again as his grin falls. He looks to Jo, who averts her eyes and takes Betta by the hand. "Come on, little one," she says, giving Bran a strange look as she leads the princess away. Then Robert's attention comes back to Bran.

"Let me show you to your rooms," he says, like nothing happened. _Don't you have servants for that?_ "We should catch up. Your father hasn't bloody written to me in ages."

* * *

Bran does go to his rooms, and gets rid of Robert after awhile – he's polite about it, but he emphasises how long the journey was and that he's very tired, and eventually Robert laughs and says boy of your age, better break in the new bed. Bran doesn't want to contemplate what that means too much, he just wants to sleep.

Before he can manage it, a knock comes on the door. He opens his eyes, groggy. He's not under the covers, it's too hot for that, but he does have to relace his shirt before he opens the door. Who wants something now?

"Ah, Ser Brandon Stark," and the other side is the green eyes and golden hair of Ser Jaime Lannister, Commander of the Kingsguard – to great public consternation – and, which any luck, Bran's future boss. He should probably try and make a good impression, but he's exhausted. "May I come in?"

Bran does not actually agree, but Ser Jaime lets himself in anyway, and sits down on the edge of Bran's bed. Bran does not, he simply stands by the doorway and lets himself stare in confusion. Jaime looks around the room, and gives an approving hum. "The king has chosen fine chambers for you, Ser Brandon. Finer than any man just barely knighted would get," he muses. "But of course, you are not any man are you? You are the Queen's sister. Does that make you a prince? I don't think so, not if I wasn't. Is there a word for the king's brothers by law?"

He has not gotten the sleep he needs, and Ser Jaime seems to go on a bit, so Bran just blinks in confusion again. "Do you want something?" he asks.

"Merely to get acquainted, that's all," Jaime smirks. "I know you've had a long journey, but I thought you might like to speak with me. After all, they say the king will put you on the Kingsguard as soon as there's a place available. I mean he has to, doesn't he? With one queen's brother as its commander, the other queen's family might take it as an insult if the son of their house isn't let in as well. Of course, not that the queen is really of your house."

"She is," Bran says, temper flaring for some reason. "The king legitimised her years ago. Besides – she's my sister, she always was, always will be. I won't have her insulted."

Ser Jaime laughs. "Insulted? Forgive me, Ser Brandon, I meant no offense. But she is a bastard." Bran flinches. How Jo hates to hear that word from any mouth but her own. "She was born a bastard, and no matter how many pieces of paper Robert signs, she will always be a bastard in many eyes – the eyes of people who matter."

"What do you mean?"

"It wasn't a popular decision, the king marrying a Snow, you do realise that?" Jaime asks. Bran frowns. He never really thought about it. "Many of the great houses of Westeros were very affronted to have their perfect little ladies passed up in favour of some whore's daughter. My lord father, I know, always took it as a slight upon my dear departed sister's honour. And with those children of hers, well, let's just say there are rumours." He pauses. "You should try and get along with me, Ser Brandon. Gods know you could use an ally here."

A sense of dread is starting to settle in Bran's stomach. "Why are you telling me this?"

Ser Jaime shrugs. "Your sister is a sweet girl," he says. "Not the most cheerful sort, but still – quiet. Keeps to herself. A very good mother." Another pause. "I'd like to help her, if I could. I'm quite fond of her. Far more than the king is."

Oh. Bran is starting to feel guilty for mistrusting this man so, if Ser Jaime just wants to help his sister, but at the same time, he's not sure he trusts him yet. Besides, help his sister with what? "Forgive me, Ser Jaime, I'm just – I'm hot, and tired. I haven't quite adjusted to the climate." He smiles weakly. "Maybe we could discuss this some other time?"

Jaime nods and stands. "Very well. I suppose the heat would be getting to you – I know it did when I first came here, and Casterly Rock is no Winterfell," he says. "Still, imagine how it is for that poor sister of yours, down in Dorne. It is strange how she hasn't come to visit the capital since her marriage, now I think of it."

He's right. That is strange. "I'll see you in the morning, Ser Jaime," he says, opening the door to usher him out.

"And I you, Ser Brandon."

He flinches. "Bran. 'Brandon' always makes me worry someone is about to have me strangled."

"Well, that seems a decent thing to be worried about."

* * *

It takes Bran some weeks to get his bearings, to get acquainted with the royal family and its surroundings. Prince Joffrey is as awful as everyone says, if not worse – _ah yes, I remember you_ , he sneers at Bran at their first meeting. _Crawling all over the walls like a damned monkey. The same way your slut sister crawled her way into my father's bed, I suppose_. Bran is too shocked to even think of responding, he just stands there, gawping like a fish as Prince Joffrey laughs and flounces away. It might be for the best, however. He thinks punching the Crown Prince is not considered one of the Kingsguards' responsibilities.

Prince Tommen is much nicer, however, a chubby lad about Bran's age, with a fondness for cakes and cats, and a willingness to share both. Bran knows he shouldn't, it's a knight's responsibility to take care of his body, but one cake can't hurt – and Ser Pounce is so cute. Bran always wished he had a pet, though he'd rather a dog than a cat – he is a Stark, after all. Still, he doesn't think he'd have been allowed to bring a pet with him if he did have one.

Princess Myrcella no longer lives here, she's married to Trystane Martell, down in Dorne. According to Tommen, she and Sansa are goodsisters and good friends.

Betta is always around, clamouring for her uncle's attention – she's endearing, but exhausting. Bran tries to suggest she might want to back off a little, but every time she looks so hurt that he can't bear the thought of wounding her like that, and gives up. So Bran ends up with a tiny blonde shadow, which is not something he ever expected to have. He also gets to know his other two nieces, or at least he tries – Daeria is still too young to have much of a personality, and Anna, well he's sure she does have a personality, but she doesn't speak enough for him to have much of a grasp on it, other than 'quiet.' She seems to have inherited all of Jo's sullenness, and left none for Betta, who she lets speak for her most of the time. To be fair, Betta speaks enough for most people.

A month or so has passed before he finds out. He can't sleep that night – the damned heat again – and he goes for a walk through the castle halls. It turns into something of an adventure, even if he knows he's too old for that, exploring the Red Keep in all its secret passageways and hidden places. It will be useful information to have, one day, if he ever has to protect the castle from invaders.

He comes to a dead end and is about to turn around and go back the way he came when he hears speaking. No, shouting.

"It's that fucking brat of yours – she's everywhere, can't you keep her under control? I haven't even been able to talk to Ned's son without the little bitch getting underfoot–"

"She's _lonely_ Robert, that's why she follows Bran about, who knows, maybe if you ever paid her any attention–"

"And why should I pay any attention to your Targaryen bastards?"

"Our daughters are not bastards!"

 _Thwack!_

Bran gasps as he hears the thud of something falling to the floor. _Jo?_ He knows he's naïve, but he knows some men treat their wives like that – Father always warned them that if he caught them beating a woman he'd have them flogged. But the king? How could he, he's meant to uphold the law, and he's Father's best friend – and Jo – oh Jo–

The rage in him is wild, a fire he's never known before, he's about to burst in and punch the king's face right off and–

"Don't."

A hand lands upon his arm and Bran jumps a mile.

He raises his arms automatically to fight, trying to figure out who it is – he sees the glint of green eyes and, Ser Jaime?

"If you try and intervene, you'll only make it worse. He won't take it out on you, he'll take it out on her." Ser Jaime pauses. "Trust me, my sister and I learned that the hard way."

More thuds and slaps come through the wall. "Why aren't you fucking doing anything?!" King Robert shouts. "Lyanna would have killed any man who tried to lay a hand on her!"

Jo mumbles something, but Bran can't figure out what.

"What do I do?" he whispers, his voice breaking.

"Wait until he's done. And comfort her when he is."

Bran can't do that. But he can't do anything else. And so he just stands there, frozen, while his sister is beaten by a man twice her size.

At least it doesn't last too long. There's a pause, and then King Robert mumbles something as well. Bran hears footsteps stomping away, and the slam of a door. He looks to Ser Jaime, who nods and reaches over his head, knocking twice at the wall behind him. Bran's confused, until he clears a click and Jaime pushes, and the wall comes away. Oh. The secret passageway has a secret exit.

Jo sits up in shock as Bran and Jaime come through – she clearly didn't know that was there either. But Bran forgets all about the stupid door as he sees the red blossoming on her cheek. "Jo!" he cries out, and immediately rushes to her side, pulling her into an embrace. "What did he do to you?"

She doesn't answer, because its obvious what he's done to her, but she leans into it, wrapping her arms around him. Ser Jaime stands at a distance. Once he pulls himself out of the embrace, he asks "Does he do this often?"

Jo hesitates a moment, then nods. "Really, this isn't so bad," she says, as if that's meant to to reassure him. She pauses, then gives a bitter snort. "Really, you should see what it's like when I do fight back."

Bran feels sick. His sister, all this time – and he didn't even know?

"How long has this been going on?"

"Since Betta was born." Bran is definitely going to be sick. Six years, half his life almost. "It was almost funny, how quick he changed his mind. You should have seen how he fawned over me when I was pregnant the first time. I was his new Lyanna, back from the dead, ready to pump out the dark-haired blue-grey eyed babies he was meant to have, not the strange golden things Cersei Lannister gave him. And then I started pumping out Targaryen-coloured babies instead. Dear Lyanna would never have done that."

Bran is stunned. And outraged. And confused. "But – why do your children look like that?"

"No idea. If Father fucked Queen Rhaella, he never told me about it," Jo says. Then she sighs. "Of course, Robert's convinced I must be some Targaryen spy, fucking one of them to put them back on the Iron Throne by subterfuge. Which, given all the Targaryens still alive are on the other side of the Narrow Sea and there are three people ahead of all my children in the line of succession anyway, would be a terrible plot, but I suppose people do come up with terrible plots."

Bran's heart aches. Jo sounds like she's just given up – but how could she, the Jo he knew was always so stubborn, how could the king have broken her so? "I'll kill him," he says without thinking about it, but as the words slip from between his lips he knows he means it. Even as it makes Jo laugh. Behind them, the other kingslayer in the room cocks his head to the side curiously. "I swear, I will. I won't let him to this to you, I'll put I sword right through his stupid fat guts–"

Jo averts her eyes. "Bran, don't be an idiot."

"I'm not!" he says. "I don't care if he kills me, it's worth it, you're my _sister_ I have to protect you–"

"Bran!" When she cries out, she sounds genuinely scared. "Do you honestly think I'll be any better off under Mad King Joffrey's reign?" That makes Bran blink. Joffrey's a prick, but he's not– "He hates me. He's always hated me, and my children. He views me as an insult to his mother, and my children as a threat to himself. The second Robert dies, he'll have us all slaughtered out of spite."

"And how can you be sure Robert won't do that?"

Jo scoffs. "If he actually believed what he said about Targaryen bastards, I wouldn't be. But he doesn't, he knows it's impossible – he knows the babes are his, he thinks the gods are just mocking him. Robert has his faults, but he's no kinslayer."

Bran thinks this all over for a moment. "I'll kill them both then," he says. It seems obvious.

"Good luck with that," Ser Jaime chimes from behind them. "To manage it, you'd have to get them in the same place long enough to strike before someone slits your throat. And King Robert barely likes my sister's children more than he likes yours."

It's strange how Ser Jaime does not come to his nephew's defense. Bran doesn't get long to ponder this, however, before Jo summons his attention again. "Bran," she says, and he looks back at her. "You're my brother. My little brother. It's my job to protect you, and I will not let you throw your life away for me. Especially not when it will probably get me killed anyway."

Bran feels like such a child, coming up with stupid plans to rescue the beautiful queen and being shot down. He can barely keep from pouting. "But – there has to be something I can do."

Jo sighs and reaches forward, winding her hand through his auburn hair. "No," she says. "Sometimes there really isn't."

* * *

When Bran returns to his rooms, he does the only thing he possibly can: he writes a letter to Father.

 _Dear Father,_

 _You may not have expected to hear from me so soon, but I have important information I must share with you. I wish I could say I am settling into King's Landing well, but unfortunately that is not the case. I write to inform you about Jo: the king is not the husband we hoped he would be. He regularly beats her, and insults and degrades her virtue, and is neglectful at best towards their children. The only reason she has not to rise up against this abuse is fear of what Prince Joffrey would do to her and her children if he were in power instead. I know this will come as a shock to you, as he was your friend for so many years, but whatever boy you first met in the Eyrie is long gone, and the man in his place is a threat to your family._

 _I want to protect her Father, but I don't know what to do. Please, as Lord of Winterfell, I beseech you: help us return home, where Jo will be safe and the king cannot hurt her. I do not know how. But please, Father, we need your help._

 _Love,_  
 _Bran._


	3. The Book of the Father

**The Book of the Father**

Of course, it takes weeks for a reply to come from Winterfell. And when it does, it's not one Bran could have possibly expected.

Father is dead.

Of course, no-one tells him that at first. An odd hush just comes over the castle, the king locking himself in his chambers with only his drink for company, not even his whores, and Bran has absolutely no idea why. It's not until two hours later that Jo knocks on his door, looking like she's had the life sucked out of her.

"Jo?" he frowns. "Is something wrong?"

"Father," she blurts out, like she barely comprehends the word. She looks him in the eye, and pulls him into her arms, knocking the wind out of him. "Father's dead."

Bran can't regain his breath. _What?_ He finds himself melting into his sister's touch automatically, for comfort, before the pain even registers. Did I do this?

He can't bear the thought. He can't escape it. That letter – _Father wasn't that old,_ he tells himself, but he wasn't young either. How old do you have to be before shocking news can – maybe he was sick, maybe he was secretly sick all along, Father never was the type to tell them about things like that, maybe Bran's letter just finished him off. King Robert was his closest friend, once. He would never have married Jo to him if he didn't believe she would be safe. And he just learned–

Tears start rolling down Bran's cheeks immediately. He buries his face in Jo's neck, knowing what a child he must look. She pulls him close and sobs into his hair.

* * *

Robert is finally letting her go back to Winterfell. _But what is the point? Father's not there anymore._ She spent her days in the godswood praying for something to happen that would let her go back home, but this – she never wanted this.

But there is still Robb at Winterfell, and Arya, and Rickon (but not Sansa), and she still wants to go back, even if she knows she can't stay. Gods, if she could talk to the stupid girl so desperate to escape it now – _do you think Lady Catelyn's glares hurt?_ she can hear herself sneering, _imagine if they were followed by actual fists._

She and Robert manage not to fight for a few weeks, both too struck with grief to really talk to each other. Not until Robert tells her he doesn't want to bring their children with them to Winterfell.

"You are kidding," she says. "Their grandfather is dead, and you want to bring that smug brat Joffrey along but not–"

"They never even met Ned!"

"And whose fault was that?!" Jo begged Robert to let her bring her children to meet her birth family, and earned a fair few bruises for it, but it had never worked. Robert so hates when anyone sees her children, their silver and amethyst – he simply ignores Cersei's blonde babes, but he's ashamed of hers. That's why he wants so badly to believe she's cuckolded him, because if she hasn't, then the gods must be doing it just to spite him – a punishment from the family he usurped and had massacred. And he fears the more lords and ladies of Westeros look in those Targaryen eyes, the more they will think King Robert is being punished too.

Or maybe he just thinks if she ever makes it back to Winterfell she'll refuse to return. She'd be lying if she said she hadn't thought about it. But really, you'd think he'd be glad to be rid of her.

"Don't argue with me woman! Consider yourself lucky I'm letting you come!"

She steps back, for once not because she's afraid he will hit her. No, she steps back simply so she can stare at him, this awful man she wed so eagerly for the crown on his head, and wonders where in him went the boy her father had loved so dearly?

"Really?" Her voice goes flat as she asks. "I should consider myself lucky you'll let me pay my respects to my own father?"

His spine stiffens, and hers does too, instinctively bracing to be hit – but then something flickers in his eyes. Pity? "Fine," he grumbles. "Bring your fucking brats along. But keep that loud one out of the Lord of Winterfell's way."

Jo blinks, confused and, despite having gotten her way much more easily than she expected, still hurt. _Robb wouldn't mind. He's sweet, he'd like her._ "I'll talk to Betta," she says. "Thank you, Your Grace," and despite knowing better she lets it sound every bit as bitter as she feels.

* * *

The journey to Winterfell is long, and awkward, and boring. The king can entertain himself with wine and whores wherever he goes, but for the rest of them, they have to find ways too keep occupied for months. Bran's knightly duties keep him busy most of the time, however – he is not of the kingsguard yet, but the king seems to have forgotten that, even if nobody else has – but Jo spends most of her time in her carriage, or in whatever rooms she's been given, or outside staring at the stars. It's not until they make it to the Riverlands that Bran gets the chance to talk to her alone.

"We have to tell Robb," he says, following her eyes up to the night sky.

Jo looks back down, frowning. "What?"

"About – this. Robert. You." Bran hasn't found a way to put it into words, so he just gestures vaguely at her fading bruises. What he's suggesting fills him with dread, but Robb is younger than Father, and he doesn't know the king, he'll be fine– "He's Lord of Winterfell now. He'll help us, you know he will."

Jo averts her eyes. "Don't be stupid, Bran."

Despite himself, Bran is offended. "I'm not being stupid!" Why does he always sound like such a child? No wonder Jo doesn't listen to him. "It's Robb, he'll help if we ask, of course he would – he loves you, Jo, if he knew you were in trouble–"

"If Robb knew I was in trouble he'd tear the Seven Kingdoms apart," Jo says. "He'd raise an army, he's start a war, he'd declare himself king if he had to. He's like that."

"And this is bad because...?"

"Because he'd _lose_ ," Jo glares at him. "Robert has the whole seven kingdoms behind him, Robb's been Lord of Winterfell for a couple of weeks, how willing do you think his bannermen would be to rise up behind him – for the bastard girl no-one ever knew what to do with anyway? It's not worth it. It would devastate the north, it would get Robb killed, and Robb isn't a boy anymore, he's married, he has a child – and I am not having to take my nephew hostage after all this, have another poor child raised in the walls of a man who'd despise him, all because of me."

Bran's heart hurts to hear all that. _Of course it's worth it_ , he wants to say, what possibly could be more important than protecting their sister? But that is the child in him talking. The man slowly realises that Jo has a point – if they started a war and lost it, it would destroy the North. And Robb's duty to the North is and will always be greater than his duty to them. "But what if Robb won?" he asks.

"He wouldn't."

"But what if he did?"

Jo sighs and looks back up to the stars. "I think about it sometimes," she admits. "My beloved brother just riding in out of nowhere, hoisting my onto his steed, taking me back home. Telling me how stupid I was for ever wanting to leave, but it's alright now, I'll be safe there, he'll take care of everything." She chuckles slightly. "Honestly, I think we all expect too much of Robb sometimes."

Bran wishes _he_ could be the brother who comes and saves Jo instead – but how?

"Let's run away."

A moment passes when Jo just turns and stares at him. The she laughs.

Bran pouts. "I mean it!" he says, and Jo only laughs more. "Why not? We won't start a war, won't cause any fuss, we'd just take your daughters in the middle of the night and go. Make our way to Braavos, or Pentos, or wherever, make a life for ourselves there. I mean, I'm a good enough knight they might put me on the Kingsguard, I'm sure I could find work as a sell-sword. Please, Jo–"

"We'd get caught, Bran."

Her laughter has died. He stares at her, and she sighs. "If – if I had more allies in King's Landing to help us, maybe. But like this? No, we'd barely know how to make it to the port. And do you really think the Spider couldn't find us? We'd be dragged back in chains – or you would. They'd probably say you kidnapped me, just to bury the scandal. You'd be hung drawn and quartered, and I won't let that happen to you – you're my little brother. I have to protect you."

 _But I have to protect you,_ he thinks, and why is this so hard? Why can't they just protect each other? "I wouldn't mind."

"But I would. If I had to watch you die for me, it'd kill me."

He sighs. She keeps exhausting his options before he can even try them. _What do I do?_ Bran has never felt such a dumb kid before. _I wish I could ask Father._ But Father is dead, and he might well be dead because Bran tried to ask him for help. It's up to him now. But Jo won't let him do anything.

She's looking up at the stars again, and on a whim, Bran comes up behind her and throws his arms around her. "I just wish I could help," he says, trying to bury a sob.

He can feel her flinch. "I wish you could too," she says, leaning into his embrace, taking what comfort she can. It's like the sky itself is staring at them, or perhaps someone else – when Bran turns his head, he thinks he sees the glint of gold in the dark.

* * *

When they finally reach Winterfell, Robb is there waiting for them – it is only then when it sinks in that Father is dead. Jo buries her nails in her palm so she won't gasp aloud. _Father is dead_. When she heard that, she sobbed, but once her tears dried she almost forgot – it didn't feel real, it didn't feel like he could be dead. _Perhaps because I hadn't seen him in years anyway._ The grief starts to turn to rage in her breast. _I will never see my father again, and I didn't see him for years because my husband was too ashamed of me, he'd keep me from my own family to punish me for not being my aunt reincarnate..._

But she can only think such things for so long, because Robb is standing in front of her, and he looks like he's been crying for weeks and has only just managed to stop – Robb was always so open, so pure, that he felt things so deeply, no matter how he tried not to. "Your Grace." He bows his head to her, and gods he's gotten tall – not as tall as Bran, but still. His voice is deep and rich, like Father's.

"My lord," she whispers back.

A pause, and then he hugs her, squeezing so tight she might break, but she says nothing and squeezes back, terrified of letting go. _He loves me so much,_ she remembers, and winces in pain. _If I'd told him I didn't want to marry Robert, he would have torn the Seven Kingdoms apart before letting me get shipped off._

But she did want to marry Robert.

She sighs and lets go.

"I missed you," she says, and Robb smiles, for what looks like the first time in a few weeks.

"It's been what, seven years? You better have missed me."

That makes her laugh.

"Your Grace," a voice comes from Robb's side, a pretty girl with a teasing smile, and a gurgling baby in her arms. Of course, Alys Karstark, or Alys Stark now – Robb's new wife, the one she had not been allowed to meet as such, she could only vaguely recall the charming, flirting girl who danced with her once at one of the feasts she was allowed to, despite the funny looks they got. If memory served, Robb certainly could have done worse.

"Lady Stark," she says, a little unsure how to speak – it's hard to make pleasantries with the thought of Father's rotting corpse lingering in the back of her mind.

"I knew you would grow up pretty," Alys teases. It looks like she's the only person here who hasn't spent the last three weeks paralysed with pain – it almost makes Jo angry for a moment, but then again, Alys and Robb have barely been married more than a year. Alys probably didn't know her goodfather that well, and really, it would make Jo angrier if she did grieve as much as the rest of them.

( _I didn't see him for seven years. He died for me long ago. Do I have the right to be in this much pain?_ )

Jo blushes slightly. "Well, I'm always glad not to disappoint."

That makes Alys laugh, and then the baby in her arms gives a happy cry. "Yes, hello you," she says. "Sorry. Really, he's been remarkably quiet so far. This is Edgar."

She smiles and leans over to look at the baby. "Hello Edgar," she says. The boy outstretches a little hand to her, and grins. He's too young to discern much about what he'll look like when he grows up, but Jo sees Robb's rich auburn hair – maybe a shade darker – and Alys' greyish eyes. A more thorough mix of Catelyn Tully and Ned Stark than most of their own children, apart from Bran.

"Hello Edgar!"

Jo jumps out of reverie and sees her daughter standing by her feet, grinning up hopefully. Her eyes dart around, wondering where Robert is and if there will be trouble, but he is ignoring them all and catching up with Lady Stark – the dowager Lady Stark – who is studying him with that careful smile of hers. Of course, Robert's problem with Betta isn't her reluctance to follow royal protocol. It's that she exists at all.

Edgar gurgles something, and Alys giggles. "I think that means 'hello' in baby."

Betta _beams_ at the thought of this baby talking to her, and Robb gives her a smile. "You're Robetta, right?"

Oh, how happy she looks at the thought her uncle knows who she is. "Yes! And you're my uncle Robb, right?" she asks. "Was I named after you?"

 _Yes and no_. At the time, Jo had been so confused by Robert's sudden break of affection, and was still trying to be a good wife, naming her daughter to honour him. But in her heart, it had been after Robb. At least, she thinks it was – but that might be her memory playing tricks on her, not wanting to recall that yes, she had been so desperate to please her husband that she'd saddled her daughter with the name of a man who hated her.

Robb laughs. "Well I like to think so." And as Betta gets acquainted with her aunt and uncle, Jo looks around, wondering what her marital family is doing. Anna is hiding behind Bran's legs, no matter how he tries to coax her in front of them, and somehow little Rickon has wound up with even littler Daeria in his arms, and is staring like he doesn't really know what to do with her (if only Sansa were here). Robert is speaking to Lady Catelyn, how is examining him with that careful smile of hers, but he's not really paying attention – Jo follows his eyeline over her shoulder, and sees him staring at whoever is talking to Bran right now. A flash of dark hair, the blaze of grey eyes, and Jo realises that's Arya.

She feels ill.

As they disperse from the courtyard, she pinches Bran's shoulder, just not knowing what else to do, and casts her eyes forward to where the king is quickly making acquaintance with their sister. Bran looks as sick as Jo feels.

* * *

Jo spends most of her time with Robb – official business, mostly, but also because from the looks of things Robb needs someone to depend on, and has trouble asking his younger siblings, or his mother, or his wife for help. But Jo and Robb have always known each other so well, they're practically twins, and Jo knows how to be there for him when he needs to be there for everyone else. One time Bran sees them at the entrance to the godswood together, her just holding him as he cries gently. He seems to be trying to keep quiet, for fear of someone catching him looking so weak. Bran hurts. He wishes _he_ could be there for Robb, the same way he wishes he could protect Jo. But he doesn't know how.

"They're close, aren't they?"

Bran smells wine and turns around to see the king has sneaked up behind him. He blinks. "Um," he says, "what?"

"Your brother and sister. The Queen and Lord Stark. They're close?"

"Yes?" Of course Jo and Robb are close, they've always been close, you'd think, after seven years of marriage, Jo might have mentioned that – but of course, Robert wouldn't want to know about his new Lyanna's actual life, he wouldn't want to know about the people she actually loved – he wouldn't want her to love anything but him–

The gears in Bran's head finally slot in place, and he realises why Robert's so curious.

 _I will kill this man,_ he thinks, with the air knocked out of him and his stomach churning, _I don't care what they do to me after, I don't care how many men I have to kill or wars I have to start just to get to him, I will kill this man. I will rip his stupid fat guts open and strangle him with them. I will anyone who thinks Jo would–_

But the king walks off before he gets the chance to.

He hears Robb sniff and compose himself, seemingly having noticed nothing, and turns to see Jo smile and reach up to ruffle his hair slightly. Then they actually enter the godswood, disappearing from Bran's sight. When he turns back around he sees Jaime Lannister, who simply raises an eyebrow at him. Bran huffs and storms off.

* * *

It's at dinner that Jo hears the news, and only because they stumble upon the topic, not because anyone really saw fit to _tell_ her. Later, she will rip Robb's head off for not mentioning it, but now is not the time.

Robert's attention is on Arya, it's been on Arya since they got here – as she's grown up Arya looks so much like Jo, and hence, so much like Lyanna. But Arya, apparently, acts like Lyanna far more: brash and wild, not quiet and sullen. Jo sees the way he looks at her, and has to dig her fork into her hand under the table so as not to dig it into his eye instead. She's starting to understand why Bran keeps scheming to get them both killed.

"Shame that sister of yours isn't here," Robert muses, and Jo doesn't want to think about why Sansa's not here – rationally, she knows it takes a long time to travel from Dorne to the North, and no-one chose that their visits would not overlap. But some pained, paranoid part of her fears Sansa did it on purpose. _Maybe she doesn't want to see me ever again. If she knows that I–_ "Still, married woman, guess she has brats of her own to look after, huh?" Sansa hasn't given Quentyn Martell children yet, but they haven't been wed too long. Jo wouldn't expect Robert to remember anyway. She doesn't expect him to remember much, with the amount he drinks. "Speaking of which, it's strange Ned hasn't married you off already," Robert muses, talking to Arya. Jo feels ill again. She's always thought Robert would like to put her aside if she could, but wouldn't want to face Father's reaction – but with Father gone, and if he could replace her with a trueborn Stark– "I suppose it's up to big brother to choose a man for you now, huh? Unless Ned arranged something before he died and you've just not had the chance to go through with it yet."

An awkward pause falls across the table. Arya looks away to glower at her roast lamb, and Robb chews his lip uncomfortably. Jo makes eyes with Bran briefly, who looks as bewildered as she is, before panning across the room to try and figure out what's going on. After entirely too long, Theon Greyjoy, of all people, breaks the silence.

"Look, I'm not any happier about this than you are kid."

"Shut up, Greyjoy!" Arya flings a spoonful of mashed potatoes at him, like she's nine again, and Robb lets out a long, tired sigh. Jo blinks, as she tries to comprehend this. But eventually, it clicks.

 _Oh_ , she thinks, _so Father is trying to comfort me over his death by making me hate him from beyond the grave._

A pause, and then Robert roars with laughter. "Well, that neatens things up!" he says, and Jo's sure only she hears the bitter note in his voice. Her head is starting to hurt. Whatever Theon's faults, he's not... "Surprised old Balon agreed to that, really. Thought he would burn this place to the ground before letting one of you touch his son and heir."

"It wasn't really Balon's idea," Robb interjects. "Apparently he's very sick, and his daughter is acting as regent. Apparently she suggested it, and Father agreed."

"Gods only know why," Arya mutters.

"No-one even told us about it," Theon says with his usual smirk. "Didn't find out until we were going through his letters. Came as a shock."

Out of the corner of her eye, Jo spots Bran take a long drag of his wine.

"I mean it's not really official yet," says Robb. "I could easily break the whole thing off if I didn't want to go through with it."

"Which you are _going to_ ," Arya glares at him. "I'm not marrying Greyjoy."

Despite herself, Jo can't help but notice the vaguely hurt expression that flickers across Theon's face.

Robb just sighs, not really answering, and Robert chuckles again. "Girls like you always say that," and Arya glares at him. "Still, if you don't want to spend the rest of your life on those rocks, there'll be a place for you in King's Landing."

Jo covers her mouth subtly with the back of her hand, trying not to be sick. Arya raises an eyebrow. "Will I be a knight of the Kingsguard like Bran?"

Robert spits out his wine laughing. "Feisty one! We'll see, we'll see."

"Excuse me." Jo draws all the eyes in the room to her when she stands, and she feels a little dizzy – she must have drunk more than she thought she did. She closes her eyes for a second, and then turns so she can flee back to her rooms. As she goes she feels the same thing she always did here – Catelyn Stark's piercing stare.

* * *

Bran is possibly a little drunk, and that is probably why he thinks this is a good idea. That is probably why he thinks there's any chance of Arya actually listening to him, and him not just making her more stubborn about the whole thing.

"Bran? What are you doing here?"

"Arya." He gives a shaky smile and doesn't answer the question. "Can I come in?"

She scoffs. "'Course you can come in."

Bran does so, and immediately sits – but manages not to fall – on the end of her bed. She gives him a funny look, and he struggles to make pleasantries, so he ends up blurting out the reason he came:

"I think you should marry Theon."

A pause, and then Arya starts to laugh. "Yeah, very funny Bran. Hey, while you're here, how about you help me get out of this mess? Do you think I can claim Father had clearly lost his mind before he died, and so it doesn't count?"

"Arya, I'm _serious_."

She frowns, and slowly, walks over to sit next to him on the bed. "You're not serious," she says. "You're drunk."

"I'm both serious and drunk."

Arya sighs. "I don't want to marry Theon," she says. "I don't want to be sold like a whore in the vague hope my cunt will be good enough to stop the Ironborn rebelling again. I don't want to be sold for anything."

"You'll have to marry someone."

"Says who?"

"Says Westeros!"

"Well that's stupid!" she says. "You don't have to get married. You're going to wear that white cloak for the rest of your days and protect Jo. Why can't I do that?"

 _But I can't protect Jo. But I'm trying to protect you_. "Well are you going to join the Silent Sisters?" he asks.

Arya scoffs. "The Silent Sisters just sew all day. I hate sewing," she says. "Besides, they're not our gods."

Bran flinches. They are his gods, now – he gave up on his father's gods, and perhaps his father's gods gave up on him too. "Arya, I know Father wouldn't like to make you – but you won't get away with it forever," he says. "I know Robb wouldn't want to force you – but if someone forced _him_ –"

Arya tilts her head to the side, confused, and Bran bites his tongue. "Robb is Lord of Winterfell now," Arya says. "Who could force him into anything?"

Bran averts his eyes and says nothing, not that it will help. Arya can be reckless, but she's smart, she'll figure it out.

"Is this about Jo?" she asks. "Is it about the King?"

Bran keeps saying nothing. _Jo will kill me if I tell her._ Jo can barely stop him from getting them all killed in some desperate attempt to save her, but Arya – Arya is more reckless than he is, and she and Jo have always been so close–

"Bran, is Jo in trouble?"

He takes a deep breath and does the only thing he can think of. He flees.

* * *

"Hey Sn– Your Grace, could we talk?"

She turns around and finds Theon Greyjoy by her side, looking uncomfortable in the gardens. "Do you want something?" she asks, and she knows she's being ruder than she needs to be, but it is Theon – he'd probably get confused if they had to actually be nice to each other.

"To talk. Hence the question."

She rolls her eyes. "I know that," she says, pacing briskly and forcing him to keep up, "what do you want to talk about?"

Theon looks very uncomfortable, rubbing the back of his neck as he blurts it out. "Arya."

She stops, and stares at him. He also has to stop, and averts his eyes under her gaze, shuffling from foot to foot. He looks like he's ten again, and in trouble with Lord Stark – although Jo barely remembers what that looked like. "Look, I know we haven't always gotten along," he says, and she raises an eyebrow. _Really, you don't say?_ "But I just want you to know – if this thing goes through, I am going to try and be a good husband to her. I'm not sure I'll succeed, but I'll try."

Jo blinks. Why is Theon telling her this? Arya seemed pretty certain it wouldn't go through – but Theon thinks it might, or maybe hopes...

"You want to marry her, don't you?"

Theon sighs, wrapping his arms around himself. "Is that so wrong of me?" he mutters. "Look, Arya's always dreaded getting shipped off to some man she doesn't know for the rest of her life, someone she'll have to put up with until she dies without any idea what he's like, yeah? And I might not be her ideal match, but she does know me, she knows what she's getting into, she's put up with me for literally her entire life so far without too much trouble–"

"Don't pretend you're doing this for Arya's sake, Theon."

"Alright, fine!" Theon raises his hands to his sides and finally looks her in the eye. "Look, I always sort of imagined that maybe one day, your father would want to marry me to one of his daughters. Make me part of the family, you know?" His voice goes soft on that sentence, and Jo feels a twinge of guilt at the vulnerability in it. "Honestly, I usually imagined it being Sansa. But we probably wouldn't have – I mean, it's tricky to get those lemoncakes she loves in the Iron Islands. It's tricky to get most of what Sansa loves in the Iron Islands. She's probably happier in Dorne." He pauses. "I mean, I always thought it was a stupid fantasy anyway, I never really thought it would happen – that's probably why I was always so eager to get under your skirts; couldn't have one of the real – one of the trueborn daughters, so I thought, hey, the bastard will do, right?"

"And you couldn't manage that either," she reminds him.

He laughs. "Yeah, well, probably for the best right? I can't imagine the king taking it well if he found out his perfect Lyanna the Second wasn't a maid after all." No, Jo can't imagine Robert taking that well either. It's not as if she'd never been tempted to give in to Theon's advances, in her drunker and more vulnerable moments. He was handsome, and she was the bastard girl, basically unmarriageable, at least to anyone important – so what did it matter? But he was still Theon, an intolerable ass right through, and her honour meant too much to her to ever really do it. It was a stupid fantasy, that's all.

In hindsight she sort of wishes she did fuck Theon, just to see the look on Robert's face. He'd probably be better at it than Robert ever was anyway – although she has to remember, in the months before Betta was born, Robert wasn't _terrible_ at it. At his weight, she had to be on top and do most of the work, but he seemed to want to compensate for that where he could, to show his blushing virgin wife how good it could be – and she, so eager to be the dutiful wife, fulfilled _those_ duties with aplomb. Until Betta was born. Then he only ever visited her chambers when drunk or in a rage, usually in a drunken rage, and the best she could do was just lie there until it was over.

She shakes herself out of her reverie. That has nothing to do with Arya.

"I guess," she says, and lets Theon continue.

"But now – apparently, he does want me to marry one of them. Or at least, doesn't hate the idea."

She closes her eyes and flinches with pain. "Did."

"...Did. Right." She doesn't want to look at the look on his face – gods only know how Theon must feel about her father's death. "Look, maybe I'm being stupid, but I can't help but think – maybe me and her could actually be happy together? Arya will fit in better on the Iron Islands than most noble women would. And my sister, I'm pretty sure she'd kill me if I was bad to the wife she picked out for me – and I don't remember my sister that well, but I remember her being pretty scary. She and Arya would get on, I reckon."

Jo sighs, not wanting to look him in the eye. So it has come to this – Theon Greyjoy, the boy she spent most of her formative years hating, asking her blessing to marry her favourite sister. And her half-wanting to give it. If only her fourteen year old self could see them now – the same fourteen year old who jumped at the chance to marry Robert Baratheon, a man she'd known for all of two weeks, because he was the _king_ and what else could possibly matter?

Arya will have to marry someone someday – she's a highborn Westerosi maid, as much as she hates to admit it, how could she ever avoid it? If she doesn't marry Theon, Robert might well demand her once he finds some way to be rid of Jo – and Jo can live with Robert, she doesn't have a choice, but she can't let that happen to her little sister. She _can't_. And even if Robert didn't steal her, whose to say whatever man she did end up with wouldn't treat her just as badly? Jo knows she's hardly the only woman in Westeros whose husband beats her.

Theon's a nuisance, he's always been a nuisance, but he's never been anything worse than that. He never hurt her, and Jo doesn't think he'd hurt Arya either. He just wants to be part of their family. He's far from the perfect choice, but at least Arya would be safe.

"Why are you telling _me_ this?" she asks him. "Surely, Robb's Lord of Winterfell now. He decides whether the marriage goes through or not. Isn't it his blessing you need?"

Theon shrugs. "Yeah, but Robb's been soft on me – he doesn't want me to forget all about him once I go back to the Iron Islands. This works out just perfect for him – he's probably going about feeling guilty because he thinks he's the only person who actually wants this. I wouldn't have to work too hard for his blessing, is what I'm saying," he explains. "You – I mean you've always hated me. And you love Arya more than anyone. So if I can get your blessing, I've actually proved something."

She's not sure it's Theon whose proved anything, but she's not going to tell him that.

"Besides, you're the fucking queen. Marrying your sister without your permission is probably a bad idea."

That makes her bark out a laugh. Right, she is the queen – it's just, locked up in the Red Keep like she tends to be, no-one has treated her like one in years. And the man who does is Theon fucking Greyjoy, the boy who wielded the word _bastard_ at her for years, like his bow and arrow. "I suggest you talk to Arya first," she tells him.

Though he tries to hide it, Theon's smile falters on his face. Jo really does feel guilty this time. "I mean, I would if... I had any idea how to."

She represses the urge to roll her eyes. "Maybe tell her the things you just told me?" she suggests. "That you won't hurt her, that you'll be good to her, that you care about her and don't want her ending up with some man she doesn't know who could do anything to her." Theon nods, taking this in, and sighing in relief – gods, he really does want her approval, doesn't he? "But fine, I'll talk to Arya for you."

He blinks. "I – didn't ask you to do that?"

"No, but – who else is she going to listen to?"

* * *

"Bran, come walk with me in the godswood."

When Mother asks – well, tells – him that, his first instinct is to refuse. He has forsaken those gods, after all, and feels a little guilty entering their world again. But they are not her gods either, he realises, and so either both of them have the right to be there or neither of them do – and she does not seem in the least bit afraid.

She goes very quiet as they pass between the weirwoods, with a serious look on her face. Bran suspects she only brought him here so someone wouldn't hear them speak. He squints his eyes against the morning light, and almost hears whispering in the trees – but that's probably just how much he had to drink last night, which wasn't that much, really, but Bran is young and not used to it. He winces when he thinks of his conversation – or his panicked rambling and pained silence – with Arya. He's been avoiding her all day, which he knows he shouldn't if once they leave here he might not see her again for years, but now sober he has no idea how he would answer the questions she must have for him.

Mother doesn't stop until they reach the Heart Tree, not speaking a word the entire time. Bran is puzzled, but is thankful for the shelter shielding his eyes at least. "Mother," he says very quietly, almost whispering, as if he too is afraid of being overheard, "what's this about?"

She lets out a long, deep sigh, looking up to the trees. "I found your father's body," she says, and Bran flinches in pain. Every reminder that Father's dead tends to do that – _Father is dead, and I killed him_. Bran knows it's foolish to blame himself, but that won't stop him. "In his solar. I was wondering why he had not come to my chambers."

A pause. Mother chews her lip, that habit she was always trying to dissuade them from, despite the fact they picked it up from her. "I found your letter," she admits, and looks back to him, "in his hand."

Bran feels like his breath has been ripped right out of him. _I'm sorry,_ he wants to fall at her knees and beg, _I didn't mean to, I swear, I didn't realise how much I'd shock him, I just needed help, I didn't know what to do–_

"Oh Bran, you mustn't blame yourself," Mother says, and it's like she just read his mind. He stares. "Maester Luwin assured us – his heart was weak already, we just didn't know it. Any shock could have done it. It's not your fault," she tells him. "You hardly made the king beat his wife."

He looks away. He doesn't know how to discuss this with anyone, least of all her – _she might tell me Jo deserves it,_ but no, no matter how much she resents her, Mother's not like that. At least, Bran hopes she isn't. "So why did you bring me here?"

Mother sighs, again. "Is there anything we can do?"

He looks back at her, and it's Mother's turn to avert her eyes, with a grimace of pain. "The king is still alive. So I presume you haven't told Robb. And I presume you aren't telling Robb for a reason." She faces him once more. "But he would do anything to protect her. And all of Winterfell would stand behind him. I truly hope the reason you're not telling him is because you fear what _I'd_ do."

"No, that's not – that's not it." Is this Mother telling him she would stand behind Robb if he chose to go to war for Jo? That she would risk her life, her children's lives, to save her husband's bastard? "I wanted to, really I wanted to. But Jo wouldn't let me. She won't let me – she wouldn't let me just kill the fucker – sorry Mother – myself; that's what I wanted to do when I found out. But she won't let me get myself killed, and she won't let Robb get killed either. She won't have anyone dying for her."

"Why?" Mother sounds genuinely confused.

"Because we're her _family_ ," and finally, Jo's mind makes sense to him. "Because she'd rather die than see us die."

Mother's eyes drop to the snow-covered ground, knotting her hands together. "That poor girl," she muses. "That poor, poor girl."

Bran can't help but be puzzled.

"What's it to you?" he asks. "You always hated her."

If Mother notes the bitterness in his voice, she doesn't flinch at it. "I did," she says, and smirks bitterly to herself. "I suppose I think it's my fault. If I wasn't so cruel to the girl, she wouldn't have jumped at the chance to marry the first man who asked – a drunkard twice her age who only wanted her because she looked like a girl who'd been dead fifteen years."

"No, she wouldn't have," Bran snaps, but when Mother stares at him, he feels guilty. She didn't do this, not really – she didn't make the king beat his wife either.

Mother sighs. "I just wish there was something I could do, to make it up to the girl," she says. "But apparently, I can't."

Bran winces, and shakes his head. His mother could always get the truth out of him. If anyone could make him give up hope.

"Very well then." Mother purses her lips together, then pulls him close and reaches up to kiss his brow. He is taller than her now. "Just know–" for a second he thinks she's about to tell him to come home, not to torture himself watching his sister suffer and futilely trying to prevent it, "–that if you do find a way out, there will always be a place here at Winterfell for you. For both of you."

"I do, Mother." He does not say that if Jo knew there was a place at Winterfell for her, they wouldn't be in this trouble to begin with. Because it doesn't matter now. It's too late to do anything about it now.

"Would you like to stay and pray with me?"

Bran hesitates. Yes, he would – he would like to take comfort from his mother, and from the voices in the trees, like he would have when he was a child without thinking about it. Perhaps he could find Father's voice in there, that rich, booming lord's tone that always knew what to do.

But he cannot. The Old Gods were never Mother's gods, but she can let herself forget that, when needs be. But they _were_ Bran's gods, and now they are not, because he gave them up – and he can never let himself forget that.

"No. No thank you," he says, and she nods.

"Very well then." She smiles at him once more before she falls to her knees before the Heart Tree and closes her eyes. After a few more seconds of standing around, Bran walks away.

But before he goes, he turns once more and watches her, praying to gods she doesn't believe in for a child she does not love.

* * *

Jo is looking for Betta – the girl has spent most of her time with Alys and Edgar, who seem to have taken a shine to her, and maybe one day if she's lucky Jo will be able to convince Robert to foster their daughter here – when she stumbles into the kitchens, and she does not expect who she finds there.

"Your Grace," she says, and perhaps that is not the best title with which to refer to her husband but she can never think of one better, "what are you doing here?"

Robert chuckles, does not look at her, and raises his mug of ale. "What does it look like I'm doing?" he asks, and Jo sighs and looks away. Of course. Really, it's a miracle she didn't find him with a whore.

Silence passes between them as Robert drinks. She barely hears it when he speaks again. "I still remember the first time I came here," he says. "Right after Ned and I left the Eyrie. It was so fucking cold here – the whole journey I told Ned how I was going to freeze my balls off. He just laughs at me." Jo's not really sure what's brought on this deluge of childhood memories. "And then we got here. And here was Lyanna – and fuck, you should have seen her. Worth freezing a thousand balls off."

Of course, Lyanna. It always comes back to Lyanna. Jo decides her safest option is not saying anything. "I couldn't keep my eyes off her, and you know, I think Ned got a little jealous – me ignoring him for a woman." He laughs with another gulp of ale, but it fades quickly. "I should have visited him sooner," he mutters. "I kept telling myself I would, before I drunk myself to death – didn't think he'd beat me to it. He was my brother, in all but blood, he was Lyanna's brother – I should have come see him."

Jo cannot help herself – that rage that lies dormant in her constantly wakes, and pokes its head out her mouth. "Then why didn't you?" she asks. "You had plenty of reason to. You sired three of his grandchildren. Why not visit him then?"

Robert sets his mug down heavily on the oaken table. "Silence, woman."

Usually, she would – she would keep silent, keep herself safe for a few hours, or days, or weeks longer. But it always ends eventually, and she cannot tame her fury. He will hit her again eventually, he always does, so why not let him know what she thinks of him?

"No," she says, and foolishly takes a step forward as he stands and turns to face her. "Please don't expect me to feel sorry for you," she sneers. "My father is dead. I will never see him again – I didn't see him for _seven years_ , because you kept me locked away from him, because you were too ashamed of me to face him and now _you'll_ never see him again either and it's your own fucking fault, so you have no right to sit around feeling sorry for yourself–"

The blow to her face doesn't come as a surprise, but even at his age and weight he's strong, and she goes falling to the floor easily. She stares up at him in his rage. "Is that why?" she asks. "Did you think he'd never love you again if he saw the bruises you left on his daughter's face?"

He balls his fist as if to punch her, and she flinches, she knows what's coming–

"What the hell are you doing?!"

They both look up and see Arya, tiny and furious, in the doorway. Jo's rage falls back in place, replaced by her fear. _No please don't hurt her she's my little sister, she's just a child, please–_

(Arya is older now than Jo was when she wed. But it doesn't seem to matter.)

Robert just blinks, as if he doesn't understand this new input. "Lady Stark," he says. "We were just–"

"You get away from my sister or I'll gut you with a breadknife."

Jo holds her breath – saying such things to the king is treason, punishable by death. And Jo wouldn't put it past Arya to be already holding the bread knife. After a moment, Robert laughs – and when he looks between the two of them, Jo thinks she sees something in his eye she doesn't often see. _Guilt?_ "Just like her," he mutters, and the he walks away.

As soon as he does, Arya rushes to Jo's side, helping her as she pushes herself off the floor. "The fuck did that bastard do to you?!" she asks, and really, of all the words, "does he do that often? He does, doesn't he? That's why – fuck, I'm going to kill him. I swear, I will, just hand me a knife and–"

Jo feels ill again. This is what she was afraid of. "Arya, please, listen–"

"I don't care if he's the fucking king, no-one does that to you and gets away with it, I will tear out his guts and strangle him with them, I–"

"Arya!" She manages to shock the girl out of her fury. "Listen to me: you aren't going to do a thing, alright."

"What – you can't seriously let him–"

"That's exactly what I'm going to do," Jo says. "And so are you. Because you are my little sister, and I am not having you beheaded for treason on my account."

"Do you think I care about–?"

"Gods, you sound just like your brother," Jo mutters, and realises that was a stupid thing to say. Arya frowns.

"Bran knows about this." She doesn't sound surprised.

"Yes, and he keeps trying to get himself killed over it too," Jo tells her. "But I won't let him, and I won't let you either. Because you're my little sister, and he's my little brother – and it's my job to protect you."

"And what about you?" Arya asks. "You're the queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Isn't it someone's job to protect you?"

Jo sighs and looks away. "I can protect myself," she says.

"Liar."

"Arya, please–" gods, this is hard. Jo wants to be protected, she wants to run away and hide, she wants someone to stab Robert through the heart and let her be done with it. But she can't – she's too vital a piece in the game of thrones, and if she runs, the country tears itself in two over her. If Robert dies, the Seven Kingdoms and all their might go to Joffrey, and everything becomes a thousand times worse. She will not have so many people die on her account. Her honour means too much to her.

"You should marry Theon," she finds herself whispering.

She expects Arya to ask what that has to do with anything, because frankly, she doesn't know herself. But Arya doesn't. "People keep telling me that," she says. "I'll – I'll get some ice."

* * *

When they finally all pack up and go, the Starks all stand in a line to bid them farewell. Bran has left this place before – for the Eyrie and for King's Landing – but it never seems to hurt any less. Robb hugs him, Mother shares a sad smile, and Arya whispers "Look out for her."

As the king comes by, he does look at Arya. By instinct, Bran's hand goes to his sword.

Arya reaches for something of her own – a hand. Theon's.

He stares down at where their fingers intersect, bewildered. "What are you doing?"

"Shut up."

That makes him laugh. "You've never done that in your life, Underfoot."

Bran sees Robb stare, equally bewildered – and then, oh so subtly, smile a little to himself.

Before she gets into her carriage, Bran takes one last look at Jo – but he cannot see her face, only her cradle of dark curls.

He sighs and saddles his horse.

* * *

On the way back from Winterfell, Robert comes into her carriage. He's not done that in months, but perhaps that whole business with Arya piqued his tragic longings again. In that case, she'd much rather this happen to her than to her little sister.

Once she would have welcomed him, or refused him, or done something. But now she simply lies there, still as a corpse – still as Lyanna – and waits for him to be finished. He mutters a name when he comes, and she no longer tricks herself into thinking she doesn't hear the first syllable.

She knows she will not tell Bran about this in the morning. She rolls over and tries to sleep, tries not to think of anything, of Lyanna, or Arya, or Betta.

* * *

On the way back from Winterfell, Bran finds himself drinking with Jaime Lannister. He knows this is a mistake, he does not trust the man, but he is angry and sad and needs to bury it somehow. He doesn't know how Lannister could make anything any worse anyhow.

"You thought you could fix it all, didn't you," Ser Jaime mutters, a lazy smirk gracing his features somewhere between his third and fourth wineskin. "That if you could only get back home, somehow, everything would be as it was again. That your father, or your big brother, or your mother, they would just wave a magic wand and you'd be free – _she'd_ be free."

Bran's heart hurts. "I don't need you to mock me," he says with another slurp of wine. Lannister sighs.

"I'm not mocking you, dear boy, I'm trying to empathise."

And Bran feels a little guilty, again. Because Jaime is Cersei Lannister's brother – he went through this all before Bran did.

And the man is right – Bran has no idea what he expected Father, or Robb, or anyone to do. He just expected them to do _something_ , because surely they had to be able to do something? At heart, he is still a child, and when you're a child you think the people who love you and are older than you, they can do anything.

But he always thought Jo could do anything, and clearly she can't do a thing to save herself.

"It's our job to protect her too," he says, and he knows he is not a knight of the Kingsguard yet, but it doesn't seem to matter.

Ser Jaime gives a sad smile. "It is," he says. "But not from him."


	4. The Book of the Stranger

**The Book of the Stranger**

Things are different once they return from Winterfell. Not for the children, Robert ignores them as much as ever, but for Jo herself. He doesn't stop hitting her entirely, but he certainly does so less often, and with less force. She's not sure why – guilt, presumably, although she thinks it's more for her late father than for her. He visits her bedchambers more often, which she's not sure if she should be happy or horrified about, so she tries not to feel anything about it at all.

Jo doesn't think it will last. This happened before, after Anna was born, and all the rage Robert had felt after Betta came back, stronger than ever (Jo still remembers the night Robert got Anna on her, as much as she tries not to). But Robert was defeated then, as if he knew he could plant as many seeds in her as he liked, and he'd never get anything but her 'Targaryen bastards'. So he'd stopped planting his seed in her, most of the time, and they'd silently agreed to do their best to ignore each other – and after awhile, they'd almost grown to tolerate each other. About the time Anna turned four, old enough that she spent most of her time by Betta's side, so Robert could ignore them both more efficiently, he got drunk enough to come to her rooms again, drunkenly pleading for his Lyanna. And Jo, Jo welcomed him with open arms – with open all her limbs – for he was her husband and deep down, she was still the naïve little girl who wanted to be the dutiful wife.

Nine months later, Daeria was born, and things were worse than ever.

Still, something good might come of this brief respite. She's tucking little Daeria into her crib, kissing the babe goodnight, when Robert swaggers – sounding less drunk than usual – through the door. She frowns. He doesn't usually come here.

"Your Grace?" she says. "Can I help you with something?" _Would you like to say goodnight to your child?_ she does not ask, for she is not going to tempt fate.

"I thought I should tell you," Robert begins, "Myrcella's nameday. I've decided – to invite her and her husband to King's Landing. I haven't seen my own damn daughter in years."

Jo's heart thuds in her chest. She was always fond of Myrcella, although she didn't know the girl well – but the girl was as sweet as her younger brother, and smarter than her two brothers combined. She was always a good sister to Jo's girls, she even tried to get something of a handle on Joffrey, to limited success. Still, surely Robert must know – this would be cruel even for him–

Robert sighs. "I've also invited Quentyn Martell and – and his wife."

Jo switches from breathing too fast to not breathing at all. "Oh," she says. Then she remembers her manners. "I – thank you, Your Grace–"

"Mm." Robert doesn't seem interested in listening to her. What else is new. He walks out, leaving Jo to compose herself. Daeria starts to cry, and Jo hurriedly wipes away a tear so she can pick her up and soothe her.

Sansa will be coming here. Jo hasn't seen Sansa since they were girls, and she knows they were never close, but – she wants to be sisters with her again, like she was when she was just a bastard. Mayhaps Sansa only ever thought of her as half a sister, but Jo would rather that than nothing at all.

 _But what if she knows? What if she hates me?_

Jo sighs and hushes Daeria. Well even in that case, at least she will know.

* * *

"I know, whore."

Jo turns around, as her maids finish lacing her up. They look more bewildered than she does. _You should call me Mother_ , she thinks, but she does not say it. "Know what?"

"What you did. To me and Sansa." Jo's heart sinks in her chest. She's spent so much time worried about what Sansa would think if she ever found out, and not enough worried of what Joffrey would think – of what Joffrey would do. He is far more dangerous. She doesn't bother to ask if he's known this all along, or only recently found out, since it doesn't seem to matter. "It's a pity. We only knew each other a couple of weeks, but we became rather fond of each other at Winterfell."

If Joffrey means something by that, it is a lie. Sansa was only eleven during that visit, and even if she was old enough, she wouldn't.

"I'm quite looking forward to renewing our acquaintance."

"You will not hurt her." Jo wishes she felt anywhere near as certain as she sounds.

Joffrey laughs as he walks away, and once he's gone Jo forces herself to let out the breath she's been holding. Only to have her dress and maids squeeze it out of her again.

* * *

Quentyn Martell is not a handsome man. She had heard that, although given the usual opinion on Dornishmen in King's Landing she hoped it was just slander. But no, he is plain of face and square of jaw, short and stocky – nothing like her beautiful, willowy sister.

And yet, Jo can't say her brother by law is completely unattractive. Something about his smile – he smiles like he's happy.

Sansa, as she takes her husband's hand and hops out of the carriage, smiles much the same. "My lady," Quentyn says with an overblown bow, and his lady giggles as she places her gentle foot upon the ground.

"Good ser," she calls him, "tell me, I was summoned here to meet the king and queen. Tell me, are you in their employ?"

"Alas not, my lady. I am merely a humble, travelling sell-sword, unworthy of the honour of taking such a beautiful highborn maid by the hand."

"And yet you have done it anyway," Sansa muses. "Hmm. Well as a Stark of Winterfell, I hereby degree: you shall be my knight, from this day until your last day."

The two of them can't keep up the game anymore, and collapse into giggles. It's almost painful how sweet they are to one another – they haven't been married long, less than a year. Sansa's first babe is only now starting to curve in her belly. The couple look odd together, and yet Jo knows her father made her sister a good match. Maybe Arya will be alright on the Iron Islands after all.

Gods, how Jo has missed Sansa. They were never that close as children, but–

Hand in hand, Sansa and Quentyn walk to where the royal couple and heir – Jo couldn't talk Robert into letting their children come; she didn't want to push her luck – await them. Myrcella and Trystane will be along shortly. Jo tries not to notice how Sansa's sweet, laughing face seems to stiffen as she gets closer.

"Prince Quentyn," says Robert, mostly sober.

"Your Grace," says Quentyn as he grasps the older man's hand, perhaps thinking of the last Martell to reside within these walls – Princess Elia, an aunt he never knew, butchered in Robert's war. "My father sends his apologies, he is not well enough to travel."

Robert laughs. "Ah, don't worry about it man, everyone knows your father can barely piss anymore without ten servants to carry him to the chamberpot. Better you than that brother of his, eh?"

Of course, they say Prince Oberyn is a master fighter and a master poisoner, who has dwelled on his sister's death for two decades. He would kill Robert, and then she would be free, except maybe he would blame the Starks too and kill her. She doesn't know.

Jo turns to her sister. "Sansa," she says, doing her best to smile – even if Sansa might not recognise her if she does that.

Sansa gives a polite smile back – like her mother's. "Your Grace."

Jo feels as if all her teeth will shatter. _She knows. She knows, and she hates me_.

"Princess," Joffrey says, and Jo knows she is going to be sick. "I haven't seen you in years. I beg your husband's pardon, but – I thought you were a beauty at eleven. I was a fool. You are more lovely now than any woman I've ever known – now I understand why they say the Dornish are lucky."

Sansa looks uncomfortable to hear such things with her husband standing right by her, and yet, when Prince Joffrey leans forward and kisses the back of her hand, she can't help but giggle like the young girl she once was.

Jo's hand flies to her mouth as her breakfast flies from her stomach. But she knows she can't afford to disgrace herself. Disgusting as it is, she swallows her vomit back down.

* * *

Prince Quentyn seems a kind boy. Jo is glad. She's not yet managed to talk to Sansa as she once would have (and even then, she and Sansa didn't always manage to talk easily) and so instead Jo gets to know her husband. They are walking and making small talk in the gardens when Jo hears the rustling of leaves, and hushed whispers.

"Shh, they'll hear us!"

Quentyn looks around puzzled, and Jo rolls her eyes. "Betta!"

A pause, and then the sound of a branch breaking and a small cry. "Ow!" Jo's heart races as she sees her little girl collapse on the ground in front of her, but the grass is soft, and she only fell a couple of feet. Jo sighs with relief as Betta pouts at her grazed elbow.

"Sweetling, I've talked to you about climbing, haven't I?"

"That if I'm going to fall, I should at least get to the top first?" Betta grins, and Jo glares. The girl sighs and lowers her head in shame. "I'm sorry Mother. But – Father wouldn't let us go meet the prince and princess, and we were so curious–"

Jo can't help but smile. That's Betta alright. Then she pauses, and reconsiders that thought. _We?_

Out of the corner of her eye, something moves, and soon her second daughter is standing there too, although as soon as anyone looks at her she shies away and seems to regret it terribly. Betta is quick to stand too, as if protecting her little sister from the agony of being seen.

"I'm sorry, Mama," Anna mumbles towards the ground. "I was – I was being stupid, I shouldn't have–"

"Hey, it's not your fault!" Betta interrupts. "It was my idea, Mother, really. Anna shouldn't get in trouble."

"Neither of you is in trouble," Jo says. Her poor girls.

"Really, I'm glad," Prince Quentyn interjects from behind her. "I did think it was odd I wasn't being allowed to meet the princesses."

Anna stiffens at the sound of his voice, a stranger. Betta quickly grabs her hand, in case something goes wrong, but then from beneath her long lashes Anna eyes Quentyn with – curiosity?

He looks to Jo, and she bites her lip and nods. Quentyn gives a shy, grateful smile before cautiously approaching the princesses, going to one knee. "Hello," he says. "I am Quentyn Martell."

Betta's hand still wrapped in hers, Anna barely manages to raise her eyes. "H-hello," she whispers. "I am Anna... Baratheon."

Jo's heart aches for poor Anna. Betta's birth hand been such a confusion, grand ceremonies cancelled and specially carved oaken crib covered with cheap handmedown sheets. She'd spent her life still in that confusion, trying to live up to the expectations the King had once had for her, even after he'd long stopped paying attention. But Anna, no-one had ever expected anything of Anna. From the day she was born, all but her mother looked at her as if it would be better if she didn't exist at all, and she learned to pretend that she didn't. The girl's only five.

(Sometimes, though she tries not to, Jo can't help but think maybe it would be better if her girls didn't exist.)

Quentyn smiles, and gently takes Anna's free hand in his own. "My lady," he says, and presses a chaste kiss. Plain as he is, Jo thinks he looks like the prince every little girl dreams of.

Anna flushes pink. "Weshouldgo!" she calls out, and Betta gives a little cry as she's yanked away, and the two girls disappear out of the garden within a few seconds.

Quentyn doesn't even get to stand before he's left there, blinking at the space in front of him. "Sorry," he says, turning to Jo, "did I – scare her–?"

Jo shakes her head. "No, don't worry, Anna's just – very shy." She'd spent some time afraid her middle daughter might be a mute – really, it was only Betta who could get through to her. "Really, that was more than she talks to most people."

"Ah. I mean, I was basically the same as a child," he says. A pause. "Actually, I'm basically the same now."

That makes her laugh. "Well, you seemed quite comfortable with my sister."

"Well who wouldn't be comfortable with your sister?"

 _I'm not_. But she's not going to say that. Quentyn sighs. "So the king doesn't want us to meet his daughters?"

Jo hesitates and looks away. "No," she mutters. She waits for a response, but doesn't get one, and then looks up again, curious. "Aren't you going to ask me why?"

Then he looks away, embarrassed. "I mean, I thought – I'm sorry, I assumed – but they look like–"

"Targaryens." Jo says it for him, and Quentyn looks grateful.

"...Would it be awful of me to ask why?"

Jo sighs. "Perhaps, but I can't be very angry when the answer is: honestly, I have no idea." She wonders, who her father could have possibly lain with to curse her like this, but nothing ever seems to make sense. Maybe it is just the gods being cruel and spiteful.

"My uncle sometimes says–" Quentyn cuts himself off then, as if he doesn't think he should say such a thing. But Jo wants to know.

"...Go on."

He sighs. "My uncle Oberyn thinks they're ghosts." Jo is bewildered. "I mean, not real ghosts, obviously. But he thinks the gods created them to punish the men who killed his sister, and his sister's children. He thinks they're Rhaenys and Aegon reborn, into the new king's line." A pause. "Sorry, my uncle's a bit–"

"I know what Oberyn Martell is like," Jo says. Then she thinks it over. Is that what they are, Robert's divine punishment? The vengeance of sweet, devoted, abandoned, brutalised and murdered Elia Martell? Did King Aerys, or Prince Rhaegar, or all the Targaryens from wherever in the heavens or hells they went, laugh as they watched the usurper slowly destroy his best friend's daughters body, and her slowly destroy his mind?

 _But what of me, Princess Elia?_ she wonders. _I did nothing wrong. I was barely born when you died. I was just a humble bastard girl, who leapt at the chance to marry into greatness. I am no more guilty of your rape or murder than you were guilty of my grandfather's, my uncle's, my aunt's._

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have–"

"It's fine," Jo says, but she can't bring herself to say anything more.

Prince Quentyn sighs. "I – I should get back to my quarters," he says. "Trystane and Myrcella wanted us to dine with them tonight, and Sansa will want to pick out my outfit for me."

Jo smiles. "That sounds like Sansa." And with a nod, she dismisses him.

For a moment she just stands there in the gardens, letting the wind set her curls all a-tangle again, trying not to think too much. Her stomach still churns slightly, but it's been doing that a lot.

Suddenly a twig snaps from behind her and she jumps awhile. When she turns though, it's only Bran. "Sorry," he says. "Did I scare you?"

"A little!" she says, still out of breath. He looks guilty enough that she opts to forgive him, however. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

He looks even guiltier, shifting his eyes to the grass, and she raises an eyebrow.

"Were you eavesdropping?"

"I didn't mean to," he says. "I was just looking for you, but when I found you, you were talking to the prince and I didn't want to interrupt, but I didn't want to walk away either, and – um."

She can't help but laugh, and then Bran laughs along with her. Maybe she should be mad, but she's in King's Landing, and if she's going to be spied on no matter what she does, she'd rather it be Bran than anyone else.

"Should I try and guess why you were looking for me?" she asks, sliding down to sit on a bench – she's feeling a little weak-kneed.

He frowns. "Do I have to have been looking for you for a reason?"

"Well, no, but there usually is one." He sighs and goes to sit next to her, but he still isn't looking her in the eye. That worries her. "What is it?"

He hesitates, staring at his feet. "Nothing."

"Bran."

"I just thought – the Martells–" he sighs, and despite his height and knightly garb, looks so pitifully young. "I mean, I know it was Tywin Lannister, but King Robert still let – what happened to Princess Elia, and her children. Surely they hate him. Surely they'd help us?"

"I'm sure they hate him," Jo says, "but they might hate us just as much. We were on Robert's side of the rebellion too."

"Father didn't – he would never–"

"Yes, Bran, _I_ know that, but do they?" she asks. Bran says nothing, and she sighs. "If we asked them for help, they might help us. Or they might sell us out to Robert out of spite. They've resigned themselves to his rule for the last twenty years after all."

"Do you think Sansa would let them–?"

"What do you think she could do to stop them?" Jo says. "I'm not putting her through that. She's happy with Quentyn and his family. I'm not tearing her between us and them." Bran sighs, and she has to laugh. "Gods, how many times have we had this argument?" she wonders.

"Too many," says Bran. He doesn't seem to find it funny. "I'm sorry, I knew it was pointless – I just–"

"I know." He stares at her with big wide eyes, and it's her turn to look away. She can't bear watching the hope slowly die in him. Bran was always such a cheerful child, and Jo can only imagine Lady Catelyn's glare, seeing her husband's bastard put her favourite son through such pain.

Bran says nothing more, but she finds his warm arms wrapped around her. Perhaps she shouldn't, but she leans into the embrace, allowing herself that comfort at least. _This is the way things are, this is the way things will always be, you should be used to it by now_. And yet she feels so sick.

* * *

She's about to go to bed when she hears an urgent knock on the door. She frowns, wondering what could be that important this late at night – it could be Robert, but it doesn't sound like his knock, he's stronger than that – and gets up, still in her nightdress, to open the door.

When she sees nothing in front of her, she looks down, and sees little Betta at her feet. "Mother," the girl says, breathless, "I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't be up, you can punish me if you like but – I was talking with Aunt Sansa, she was teaching me how to sew, but then Joffrey came in and at first it was fine but then he started acting weird and – I didn't know what to do, so I came to get you."

Jo's heart sinks in her chest. Sansa. _No, gods, no_. "Show me," she says, and Betta nods before running off ahead, and no matter how woozy it makes her, Jo runs after.

When she gets there, nothing is ostensibly wrong. Sansa is still sewing, and Joffrey is peering over her shoulder, seemingly just curious.

"I mean, this really isn't very complex," Sansa explains, "I wanted to teach the girl with something simple. In all honesty, I'm a little bored."

"Well it looks complex enough to me," says Joffrey. "I certainly couldn't do it."

Sansa smiles. "Oh, I wouldn't say that, Your Grace. Most men could, it's just that they are not taught how. It's quite rare of you to show an interest."

That makes Joffrey grin. Jo remembers when she first got here, only a few weeks after her wedding, Joffrey ripped a tapestry Myrcella had been working on for weeks from her hands, and ground it into the floor with his boot. Tommen had asked for it, you see, it was a picture of one of his cats, and apparently Joffrey thought his sister shouldn't indulge his brother's soft, kind – human – tendencies. Jo had still – just – been installed with the authority of the queen, and she did what she thought Lady Catelyn would have done had one of her sons done something so childishly cruel: she had the boy's arse flogged by one of the Kingsguard. She chose Ser Jaime, presuming the boy's uncle would not be unnecessarily mean to him, and did not dare have him struck more than thrice. Still, the boy was clearly unused to discipline, and he wailed and swore and cursed her throughout, calling her a whore, promising revenge. She'd thought nothing of it at the time, he was only twelve, but that was before Robert changed. If Joffrey did not hate her already for the insult she was to his late mother, she sealed it that day.

"I presume that husband of yours can't sew at all?"

Sansa looks a little bashful. "Well, I mean, he asked me to teach him, but I think he was just trying to impress me, he had no natural skill for it. His fingers were too wide."

"Not like mine." Jo watches as Joffrey closes his fingers around Sansa's delicate wrist – his fingers are long, smooth and bedecked with gold and onyx; no-one has ever been able to say the boy isn't handsome – and Sansa looks up at him, puzzled. Jo knows she should intervene, but she finds herself rooted to the ground. "I think you dropped a stitch, my lady."

Sansa's spine stiffens. "I did not," she says, a drop of her childish haughtiness returning. "That's knitting."

"You did," says Joffrey, "right here." He pushes his finger against the tapestry where it rests on Sansa's lap, far too high up her thigh.

Jo watches the blood rush to Sansa's cheeks. She tries to squirm away, but the chair is too small to make much of an escape. "Your Grace," she says carefully, "forgive me, but it's very late, I really ought to return to my chambers–"

"Must you?" Joffrey asks. "You were perfectly happy sitting here with me before."

"I think you've had rather too much to drink–"

He laughs. "Yes, and I'll say you have too, if it makes you feel better." His hand starts to make it's way up her thigh, not bothering to pretend anymore, and she slaps it away. "Come now, don't be like that. I know you want me. You've wanted me since you were eleven, you little slut."

Sansa turns bright red. _Go in there_ , Jo tells herself, still frozen, _wring his fucking neck_.

"Prince Joffrey, don't get me wrong, I am flattered, and you are very handsome – but I am married–"

"You should have married me," Joffrey snarls. "You would have done, if your whore of sister hadn't stopped it. You would have been my queen one day. Don't you want to get revenge?"

Jo feels sick again. Joffrey doesn't even want Sansa; he's doing it purely to spite her. "Be that as it may, Your Grace, I am Quentyn's wife and I will not dishonour myself–"

Joffrey hisses with rage and squeezes Sansa's thigh so hard she yelps in pain. "You're telling me you're happy with that Dornish donkey?"

Jo sees the fire blaze in Sansa's eyes. "That 'Dornish donkey' is my husband, a prince of Dorne, and a far truer prince than you will ever be! You ought to talk about him with more respect–"

"Why? What can he do to me?" Joffrey asks. Jo's stomach churns again. Joffrey is the crown prince of the realm; what could poor Quentyn Martell do to him? "Will he go to war for your honour? Ha, that'd be funny. I've never liked the Dornish, they've spent too long brooding over Rhaegar's bitch, I don't trust them. I'm always telling Father he should strike against them before they can against him." Joffrey pauses, and Jo watches Sansa tense up even further, is if ready to recoil in defense of her new family. "But who knows, you seem to have settled into the place well. Maybe if you convinced me, I'd think a little more highly of it..."

Jo finally finds her feet.

"Joffrey! What are you doing?!"

He jumps when she bursts into the room, but settles down when he sees who it is, not even removing his hand from Sansa's thigh. "Mother," he says, smiling at her sickeningly, "Princess Sansa and I were having a nice conversation. What are you doing here?"

Jo forces herself not to be sick until the monster is dealt with. "You get away from my sister right now or I'll–"

"Or what? What will you do to me, bastard?"

Sansa looks at her, eyes wide and terrified – even with her stomach swollen with child, she looks an eleven-year-old again. "Jo..."

Gods, what can she do? If she called the guards, there's no chance they'd take the disgraced queen's side over the future king's. Could she fight him herself? Joffrey is no warrior; he could have been, like his uncle, but he never wanted to train if he wasn't instantly an expert. Still, he is a young man in the prime of life, and she is a woman whose three babes took some life out of her; she's felt so sick lately–

"What the blazes are you lot yelling about?!"

Jo turns her head, and there in the doorway stands Robert, reeking of whores and wine. For the first time in years, Jo is actually glad to see him.

She's glad, but she's also puzzled. There, behind Robert's hulking frame is little Anna, hiding shyly again. She must have gotten Robert – but she is so scared of her father, her father who never even pretended to want her. _Oh, my brave girl_ , Jo thinks, and quickly searches her for bruises – she sees nothing, but Anna's hair is slightly astray, as if it might have been pulled.

But when she turns back at Joffrey and Sansa, he's finally taken his filthy hands off her, eyes wide and frightened. King Robert has always been the only person Joffrey loves, and fears – the only man he respects. Robert doesn't deserve it, but still.

"Father," Joffrey chokes out, "we were – I was just–"

"I was just trying to stop your son raping a princess of Dorne," Jo says before Joffrey can finish his excuses. _My sister_ , she wants to add, but that would make Robert less enraged. As is, she watches his eyes narrow in absolute fury towards his son, and the innocent girl dragged into this mess. _Ours is the fury_ , Jo thinks. _I am no Baratheon, Joffrey, and neither are you, but he is._

"Lady Stark," says Robert, seemingly forgetting Sansa is a married woman now – he knows her only as Ned's daughter, "is this true?"

Sansa's shock has given way, and now she just shakes with terror. "I am – I am not quite sure, Your Grace," she says. "But – I didn't want to, and he wouldn't let me be – he said he wanted to attack Dorne, but I – I could convince him–"

Sansa bites her lip, and Joffrey does not look at her. He stares at the floor, seemingly ashamed of herself. Robert's mouth is set in a hard firm line. For the first time, he reminds Jo of Father.

"Come here."

"Father–"

"Now."

Joffrey knows the trouble he's in, but he has no choice. He slumps toward Robert like a beaten dog, and if it were anyone else Jo would feel pity, but what he did to Sansa–

He whimpers in pain at the first strike. It's barely a slap, and Jo thinks _come now love, you've done worse to me for looking at you the wrong way._

Robert's restraint doesn't last long. The slaps quickly turn to punches, and Joffrey starts to blubber as his face goes red, then purple. At the fourth or fifth blow, the boy's legs give way and he collapses to the floor, and so the punches turn to kicks. Robert's heavy boot collides with his son's nose, Jo hears a sharp crack and blood runs from the boy's nose.

Sansa gasps in shock, and Jo starts to feel sick again. Joffrey is a man grown now, but he's never really stopped being the bratty twelve year old she met at Winterfell. By law, he is her son. _He tried to rape my sister, he deserves it_ , but as his face turns that awful puce Jo sees Anna hiding and whimpering in the doorway, and she thinks of Cersei Lannister, and her own firstborn, and wonders what Betta would have to do for Robert to unleash that fury on her. _We are all Baratheons, and yet none of us are._

Once Joffrey is beaten enough, Robert seizes him by the throat and hauls him close. "Listen to me, boy," he spits in Joffrey's face as the boy struggles for air, "if I hear of you trying to rape any girl, from a princess to the cheapest whore, I'll break your fucking neck. Understand?!"

Joffrey cannot answer in words, he can't breathe, but he nods desperately and with a final snarl, Robert lets him go. Joffrey collapses onto the floor, barely conscious.

Robert storms off, leaving the women alone in Betta's room, and Jo wonders how they're going to get rid off the boy. Before she can think better of it, she offers a hand to him. Joffrey looks at her a second, barely seeming to understand anything, and then his face contorts in a grimace and he shoves her away.

"Don't touch me, whore."

He forces himself to his feet and storms off, new purple collar clashing with his Lannister crimson cloak. Anna still stands in the doorway, Sansa is still shaking, and Jo can only stare.

"Anna?! Where did you–" Betta careens into view, cutting herself off as she observes her own room and the blood on the floor. "...What happened here?"

Anna doesn't answer, just clings to Betta's arm and starts to sob. "Hey, it's alright," Betta tries to comfort her, even though she still has no idea what's going on. _She's only six_ , Jo thinks, but of course Anna is even younger.

"It's alright, little one." Jo turns again and sees Sansa smiling, even as her quivers haven't fully subsided yet. "Prince Joffrey and I had a bit of a fight. But your father sorted it out."

Betta frowns, turning to her mother. Jo can't help but look away in shame, and she has no idea what to say. _I'm sorry, I didn't know what to do, you think I can fix anything but I can't, I have no idea how to protect any of you–_

Anna sniffles, loudly. "Betta, could I sleep here tonight?" she asks.

"Of course," says Betta.

Jo jumps when she feels fingers close upon her forearm. It's Sansa. "Jo, could you walk me back to my chambers?"

"...Of course."

* * *

Sansa stops shaking as they make their way across the Red Keep, but their arms remain linked. Jo feels so exhausted she wants to fall down and sleep right there on the floor, but she has to stay awake. She'll have to check on Daeria once more before she goes to bed.

Partway through the walk, Sansa asks: "Did you?"

Jo blinks. "Did I what?"

"Stop me and Joffrey being betrothed."

 _Well she might understand now._ "I did," Jo says, and bites her lip. It had been her first true act as queen, to convince her husband that he could not let his son marry Sansa. When she'd come to King's Landing and truly gotten to know Joffrey, gotten to know Tommen's screams as he woke and found a stray cat Joffrey had found on the streets cut open and still struggling for life on his pillow, and Jo knew she had to protect Sansa at any cost – even the cost of Sansa's love. She doesn't remember how she talked Robert out of it, but this was in the first months of their marriage, when she was Lyanna come again and he would do anything she asked. She always thought she would explain it to Sansa whenever she saw her again, but then Betta was born and Robert kept Sansa away for years, and Jo just assumed Sansa would hate her for having ruined the only thing she ever wanted – having stolen her chance to be a princess.

Sansa nods. "Thank you," she whispers.

"...I thought you must hate me for it," Jo finds herself admitting. Sansa looks confused. "Because – you always wanted to be a princess. You had this dream, that I could be queen, you'd be a princess and Bran would be our knight. And I ruined that."

"No, Jo, I–" Sansa pauses. And then she laughs. "I thought you hated me!"

Jo blinks. _What?_

"I thought – I was always so mean to you, as a child. I thought I was better than you, because I was a lady and you were just a bastard," Sansa explains. Jo is puzzled. Of course Sansa thought that – everyone thought that, because that's what people think of bastards. And Sansa had always loved her as well as she could. So how could Jo hate her for it? "I thought – once you became queen, you'd think I only wanted to be your sister for the power, and the glory. And I couldn't blame you. So I hated myself for it, and assumed that's why you never came to Dorne."

"I could never hate you," Jo says. "I still remember you tiny and squalling. You're my little sister. Did you really think, once I was queen I'd want nothing to do with you?"

Sansa shrugs. "Alright, I know better now," she says. "But when I didn't hear from you for years, I thought – I thought that must be it." A pause. "Why didn't you come visit?"

Jo averts her eyes. She doesn't want to lie to her sister, but she can't tell her the truth. She can imagine the horror on Sansa's face at the simple words I wasn't allowed. If Sansa already feels so guilty about the way she treated her, what would she do to try and make it up? She's already seen Robert's rage in action, but she must think it righteous, only meted out to a boy who thought he could use his position to disgrace and defile her. Sansa was always naïve, and believed in goodness and honour and justice. Jo knows not how much life has disabused her of those notions, but she does not want to do so any further.

"...Were you just trying to protect me from Joffrey?"

She doesn't say anything, but Jo lets herself nod. Really, it's a good thing she didn't get to visit – she doesn't know what excuse she would have found for Joffrey not to come with them, and he's only grown more resentful as the years have passed. As heir to the throne, he should have been wed long ago, but as he grew to manhood his reputation grew so foul that even the crown wasn't enough to convince most women to share his bed. Ambitious nobles are far more likely to throw their daughters at sweet Tommen, barely more than a child, instead, as many expect someone will put a knife through Joffrey's back long before he sires an heir. Sansa might well have been his last chance at marriage. Joffrey is, in a way, not so unlike Betta – they are both desperate for the the love their father has never given them. It's just a shame he's evil.

Sansa sighs. "I should probably leave the capital," she says. "I wish we could spend more time together – but I don't think I'll be safe here."

Jo nods. Yes. Go. Get out of this place, and never come back. "Are you going to tell Quentyn?"

"Of course," says Sansa, taking her by surprise. "He's my husband, I can hardly keep something like this from him. Besides, I'm a terrible liar."

Jo bites her lip. She always thought she was a terrible liar, but apparently she's learned. Gods help me, I've gone native.

"He loves you very much," she murmurs. "I can tell."

Sansa smiles. "I know," she says. "For what it's worth, it is returned. We're very happy together. And I did get to be a princess after all."

Jo laughs as they finally stop outside hers and Quentyn's chambers. They knock, and Quentyn looks positively frazzled as he opens the door. "Sansa! Are you alright? I was worried about you." He sees them standing hand-in-hand, still a little worse for wear, and frowns. "What's wrong?"

Sansa positively pours herself into his embrace, burying her head against his neck. She's taller than him, but it doesn't seem to matter. "I'll tell you in a moment," she says, and Jo closes the door on them – this is not her moment, it is theirs. Still, she can't help but wonder what it must be like to be so loved.

She tries not to have that thought when Robert comes to her chambers that night, Joffrey's blood still under his nails.

* * *

When the Martells leave, Jo expects everything to go back to normal – and mostly it does, although Joffrey hates her even more now as his face heals. She tries to hide the whole thing from Bran, but that's hard to do when the crown prince, who it is technically his job to protect, has turned violet. And apparently, Betta told him. Bran has no advice this time however, simply leans his head against Jo's and sighs. Jo thinks he must wonder if he'll ever see Sansa again too.

For the most part, things are the same: Robert switches between ignoring her, beating her and fucking her, Joffrey's rage simmers beneath the surface, Bran stares on with such sadness and frustration, and Tommen, Betta and Anna try not to get caught in the middle of it all. Everything's gone back to normal.

But Jo's sickness doesn't abate.

She tries hiding it, until one day she's standing in the middle of the hallway and her knees give out from under her for no reason whatsoever.

Luckily, someone's there to catch her. She sees a flash of blond hair and is frightened for a second – but then she sees it's just Jaime Lannister. She doesn't know the man well, and remembers the contempt Father had for him, but Jo likes him well enough – he's always been kind to her, kinder than most men in this castle. He can empathise. He's seemed a little off, a little conflicted since the incident with Joffrey – Ser Jaime seems to know the prince had it coming as well as anyone, and he's never exactly been the most dedicated uncle (perhaps if he was, Joffrey wouldn't be what he is). And yet, he still hates the thought of Robert hurting his sister's son. Jo can empathise.

She lets out a long sigh as he helps her back to her feet. "Thank you, Ser Jaime," she says, and he smiles at her.

"Careful, Your Grace. I can't be around to catch you all the time." She blinks. She hardly expects him to catch her all the time – has that ever happened before? "You're heavier than I remember you being. Have you put on weight?"

Jo is still utterly bewildered, and Jaime raises an eyebrow at her. "Oh, don't take it as an insult, Your Grace. I'd say it suits you," he says. "In fact, I'd say you're positively glowing."


	5. The Book of the Crone

**The Book of the Crone**

After Sansa leaves, Jo starts acting strange. It might just be that she misses her – Bran misses her too, all the more because, thanks to Joffrey, they might never see her again – but it's more than that. She's ill, she's been ill for weeks. Bran worries about her, tells her to go talk to the Grand Maester Pycelle, but she tells him it's nothing to worry about and besides, she doesn't want to let that old pervert put his hands on her unless she absolutely has to. Bran doesn't really understand, because Pycelle is a Maester sworn to celibacy, but he doesn't ask. Sometimes, he sees Jo talking to Jaime Lannister with a worried look on her face – but she always dismisses him before Bran can get close enough to hear what they're talking about. When he asks her, she smiles and says nothing before moving on to the first other thing to talk about she can think of, and Bran wishes he could believe her, but he doesn't.

The pieces don't start to fall in to place until breakfast one morning, as he watches Jo greedily shovel pancakes into her mouth – so unlike herself; she always used to be careful to eat with dignity and grace, to appear ladylike even if it wouldn't impress anyone, it would only worsen Mother's spite (perhaps it was to worsen Mother's spite). Then, halfway through her meal, Jo stops, covers her mouth, stands and runs.

As she goes, Bran realises she's put on weight.

* * *

Jo doesn't know what to do.

Perhaps it would be better if she thought she had no choice what to do, that she just had to birth the thing and live with the consequences, but now she knows better. Jaime fucking Lannister. He's told her it is not so uncommon, that she need not be ashamed, that his sister did it once or twice – but he doesn't explain why, even though Cersei's children don't look like hers.

Perhaps she need not be, since the Old Gods don't preach against this like the New do, but she is frightened.

She clasps a hand over her belly – you can only sense the swelling by touch, but she knows it will be visible soon – and tries to feel some love for it. All she feels is terror. There is no joy the thought of motherhood anymore, like there was with Betta; she can no longer even hope that this might make things better, like she did with Anna. There is only dread.

 _What if it's a boy?_ she thinks. _What if I give Robert a son that looks like Rhaegar Targaryen? He'd smother the poor babe in its cradle._

It is not safe, Jo knows that. But neither is this.

* * *

It's near the end of twilight – the sky has almost gone black – when Bran hears a knock at his door. He sits up, frowning, and puts down the copy of the Seven-Pointed Star he's been trying to force himself to read (he wants to get more fully acquainted with his new religion, but it's so boring). _Who could that be?_ Jo, most likely – but she's been avoiding him lately. He hoped they'd be able to spend more time together when King Robert went on his hunting trip, but Jo keeps pushing Bran away with a guilty look. _Maybe she's come to apologise, to explain?_

It's not Jo. It's Jaime Lannister. Bran blinks, so confused he doesn't even say hello, and Jaime smirks and decides to do the talking for him. "Ser Brandon," he says. "May I come in?"

Bran lets him in, and notes how he doesn't sit down on the bed. He mustn't plan on being here for very long. "Are you worried about your sister?" he asks.

He stares. "Of course I am," he says, affronted. "Who wouldn't be? What kind of question is that?!"

"Forgive me, boy, I wasn't accusing you of anything." _Don't call me boy!_ some part of Bran wants to shout, but of course he is still a boy. He's not even sixteen yet; he's only a knight because he's the king's best friend's son. _Oh Father, if only you knew what he really was.._. But of course Father did know, if only for a little while, because Bran told him. And knowing that killed him. "What I meant was: have you been more worried about her lately than you were before?"

"I–" Bran hesitates. Has he? _She's put on weight_. But women's weight fluctuates all the time, so does men's, it doesn't mean anything – King Robert hates her, why would he even–

"Come now, you're an observant lad," says Ser Jaime. "Of course you noticed. I noticed, and I had no reason to – she's been ill awhile now, hasn't she? And it's so rare for her to get sick; I've noticed that, even with Robert beating her black and blue daily, she's always been very robust. Must be that Dornish peasant stock. And she's been avoiding you, hasn't she? You don't know what you've done wrong, but you wish she'd just tell you. You wish there was something she could tell you, that it was about something you'd done, that she wasn't keeping some horrible secret that she couldn't bear for you to know."

Bran swallows hard. "Ser Jaime," he says, slowly, "do you know something?"

"I know many things." Bran waits, and Jaime smirks. "About your sister, however, I know one very important thing: that she's in my chambers right now." Bran blinks. What? He doesn't understand, is the Kingslayer trying to threaten them? "Not for anything untoward, I assure you. I think this would make your father laugh, but: my intentions are entirely honourable." _Then what are they?_ "Still, I'd recommend you run along and check on her. She asked me not to tell you, but – I think you two really ought to have a conversation."

Bran blinks. He still has no idea what's going on. But if Jo's in trouble...

* * *

She jumps and looks up as the door swings open. _I've been caught,_ she thinks immediately. _They've caught me, they know, they'll tell Robert and he'll have me killed._

Her heart settles down in a moment. She knows she's being paranoid – even if someone did catch her, they wouldn't know why she was here, although it would be tricky to explain – and when the person comes through, she realises it's only Bran.

"Jo." He gives a puzzled frown as he sees her, curled up on a cushion in the windowsill, a cup of tea staring across at her like they're locked in a battle of wills. "What are you doing here?"

She raises an eyebrow. "I could ask you the same."

Bran sighs and goes to sit across from her – when he sees the tea, he pushes it between the two of them. "Ser Jaime told me you were here. But he wouldn't tell me why." Jo bites her lip. Ser Jaime. He promised not to tell him. But technically, she only made the man promise not to tell Bran what she was doing; she never told him not to go get Bran so she'd have to tell him herself. Clever man. It's her own damn fault for trusting the Kingslayer anyway. "So, returning to the original question: what are you doing here?"

She takes a deep breath, knowing there's no avoiding it. She indicates the mug with her eyes, as if that will explain everything. Bran gives a puzzled frown, and she knows he doesn't understand. Of course not. She expected the stuff to come green and bubbling, like a witch's brew in an old storybook, or maybe a thick black ooze that would smother the baby inside her. But no, it doesn't look any different from ordinary tea. At first, she'd been afraid Ser Jaime was playing a horrible jape on her.

"I'm pregnant."

"I know," says Bran. "Or, well, I thought I knew. I suspected." A pause. "Though I am a little confused about how."

Jo blinks. "I thought – Father, or Septon Chayle, or Maester Luwin – surely someone's explained by now–"

"No, I mean, I know _how_ ," Bran explains. "But why, I don't understand why." Jo frowns. What does he mean, 'why'? "Why would Robert still want to – he hates you, he hates your children, he beats you constantly. He has his whores. Why would he still want to make love to you?"

Jo gapes for a second, and then has to look away. Gods, she'd rather he not understand how – she could explain that far more easily than this. "The Dothraki don't _love_ the goatherds of their sea, Bran," she murmurs, but when she looks back at him she realises that hasn't explained a thing. She sighs. "He doesn't make love to me – he doesn't love me. He fucks me. He fucks me, to get his own back for the children. He fucks me, because I might never be his Lyanna but when he's drunk enough I still look like her. He fucks me because I'm there. I don't know."

Bran looks horrified. "Jo..."

"He's never forced me," Jo says quickly, and she believes the words up until the second they come out of her mouth. "He's never had to. I'm his wife, it's his right."

"So he's never forced you, he's let the Seven do it for him?"

Jo has to look away again, listening to Bran breathe in and out with ever more anger. "I'll kill him. I swear I will. I don't care if it tears the entire country in two, I will kill him–" Jo has to laugh, and that doesn't calm him down. "I mean it! For what he's done to you, he deserves to die, he deserves every horrible thing there is in the whole fucking world – why are you laughing?!"

"I'm sorry, it's not – I believe you–" _and that terrifies me,_ "–it's just – you sound like Robb."

Bran stops, and his fury and her laughter fade away together. Bran drops his gaze to the windowpane. "I wish Robb were here," he mutters. "He'd know what to do."

"He wouldn't," Jo says. "He'd just pretend he did, and probably do something very stupid as a result." Bran smiles to himself, like _that does sound like Robb_. Jo looks at Bran, and thinks _he looks like Robb. And he looks like Father._ The men who should be able to protect her, but can't. _And Bran can't either. It must be killing him._

A moment of silence passes, and then Bran gets that puzzled look again. "Wait, hang on," he says. "What does this have to do with why you're here?"

Jo bites her lip, staring at the tea once more.

"Why do you keep staring at that cup?" Bran asks her. So Jo doesn't, she looks up, and stares at him instead. Finally, it seems to click. "Wait, Jo, that's not – you're not going to–"

"I can't go through it again," Jo says, and she hates how her voice cracks over the words. She doesn't want to cry about it. She's not cried about it in years. Robert doesn't deserve that. "I can't. I'm so scared all the time. I'm so sick of being so scared. If I have another one, he might kill me – or it, or probably both of us. Especially if it's a boy. I can't Bran."

Bran says nothing for a long moment, staring at the moon tea like it might attack any moment. "...Mother wouldn't appr–"

"Mother?!"

Bran flinches, cutting off his words midsentence, but the damage is already done. Jo has no mother, she knows that, she's always known that, but right now it stings in a way it hasn't in years. Perhaps if she did have a mother, this wouldn't have happened to her. But it did, and she must live with it, so Lady Catelyn can keep her family, duty, honour and her Seven Gods and all the millions of things they forbid. Jo has to just stay alive. She's only a bastard, why would anyone expect anything better of her?

"...This isn't you," Bran says. He smiles sadly. "I know you. You always wanted to be such a good wife. You don't want to do this."

Jo sighs. Bran was always the smart one; he's right of course. "No, I don't want to," she says. "I want to have my baby. I want to have a son, I always dreamed of having a son, of giving my husband an heir he could be proud of. I always wanted to be a good wife – to a good husband." She sighs. She was such a stupid girl. "But I don't have a good husband, do I? He failed me long before I failed him. I don't owe him anything."

"No, you don't." Bran looks down at the tea. "Is it safe?"

Jo can't bring herself to lie to him. "No," she says. "It's basically poison. The trick is to drink enough to kill the baby without killing yourself."

Bran nods, obviously terrified, but trying to be strong for her. _He's grown up so much,_ Jo realises. "So wait, why are you here?" he asks again. "Why are you doing this in Ser Jaime's chambers?"

She sighs. "Well he gave me the idea," she says. Bran looks surprised. "I would never have thought of it on my own. But he told me the stuff was easy to find in King's Landing, that he could get some for me, that he did so for his sister once or twice. I thought – it wasn't worth the risk of taking it to my room, one of the maids could find it."

Bran nods along. "Are you sure we can trust him?" he asks.

Jo shrugs uneasily. "No, not really," she says. "But what choice did I have? Where else would I find this?" Bran accepts that, but Jo knows she's taking an enormous risk. No matter what she does, she's taking an enormous risk. "Besides, what he told me about his sister – why would he let me in on that information? Remember, Robert was married to her first. He might have treated her just as badly. Jaime probably hates him as much as we do."

"Cersei's children don't look like Targaryens," Bran muses, but it doesn't seem to matter. "Alright. So, that's that then? You've made up your mind?"

Jo nods. Then she smiles. "But, I have to admit, I'm sort of glad you're here – that I got to talk you through it." Bran looks puzzled again. "I'm not sure I could bring myself to go through with it alone."

"Oh." Then Jo takes a deep breath, readying herself to grasp the mug once more. Just before she can, however, Bran suddenly seizes her wrist.

She blinks up at him. "What?"

He looks embarrassed. "I'm not – I'm not trying to stop you," he says. "I just thought – you could do with the support."

She smiles, and feels like she might cry. _Oh my poor baby brother. What have I done to you?_

Slowly, she laces the fingers on her left hand with his. Then, with the other, she grabs her tea, and drinks.

She's surprised when she doesn't immediately start screaming in agony. Bran does not let go of her hand, even when she sets the empty mug back down, he just watches her with eyes as firm and steely as Father's. "Are you alright?" he asks, and Jo nods, even if she knows she won't be for long.

"Could you help me back to my rooms?" she asks. "It might cause a bit of a scandal if the queen is taken ill in the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard's chambers."

Bran nods and keeps holding her hand as he helps her to her feet. She really doesn't need help to walk, but as they wander back to her rooms she lets herself lean against his shoulder.

* * *

It's the middle of the night and Bran is struggling to get some sleep when he hears screaming. He leaps up in bed, fully clothed – he knew this was coming – and goes racing from his rooms.

When he makes it to Jo's, a maid gets in his way. "Ser Brandon!" she says. "These are the queen's private chambers, you are not allowed – only the king is–"

"The king isn't here!" Bran shouts. _The king only comes here for one reason, and it's sure as hell not to take care of her when she's in pain._ "I am her brother, let me through!"

"I'm sorry ser – it's not allowed–"

Bran has no time for this. Without thinking about it, he reaches for the hilt of his sword. "Do you really plan on stopping me?"

The maid freezes. Bran is a good swordsman, but he's hardly feared-throughout-the-seven-kingdoms level – still, she's just a humble serving wench, she could hardly defend herself from the most useless of knights and any man with a blade must terrify her. Bran does feel guilty, he feels horribly guilty for threatening this innocent girl so, but he has to – Jo is in trouble.

"...Very well, ser," the maid mutters, and steps aside.

When Bran makes it in Grand Maester Pycelle is already there, and he seems less surprised to see Bran than the maid was. "Ser Brandon," he says. "I'm sorry to say, your sister has lost a child. I didn't even know she was with child. The fool girl should have come to me as soon as she noticed the signs."

 _Did you not get suspicious?_ Bran wonders. _Ser Jaime figured it out on his own. Even I knew, deep down, I just didn't want to admit it. Isn't knowing these things your job?_ Bran doesn't say that though, he just pulls up a chair and sits by Jo's side, gasping as he sees the pool of blood staining the sheets.

"Will she be alright?"

"Who can say," says Pycelle. "Most women are, of course, but there's always a risk – complications can occur. You never know."

Bran looks back at Jo, her screams of pain having transformed into muted groans. She certainly doesn't look alright. "Jo," he whispers, tears in his eyes, and he reaches for her hand again. Weakly, she squeezes it back. _I shouldn't have let her do this. I should have thought of some other way. What if she dies? What if I kill her like I killed Father?_

"Ser Brandon, there's really nothing you can do," Maester Pycelle says. "There's really nothing I can do, now. We can only wait and see if she recovers."

"I'm not leaving her."

Pycelle sighs. "Very well then," he says. Then he walks out, leaving Bran alone by Jo's bedside.

"Thank the gods," Jo mutters under her breath, and Bran can't help but smile. Gently, he brushes his fingers through her sweat-soaked curls, and that seems to comfort her. He looks down at the mess of clotted blood between her legs, and frowns. He expected it to look more like a baby. He expected to see something human in it, but he sees nothing but blood, and certainly nothing compared to his real, living sister.

"It'll be alright, Jo," he says. "I'm here now. It'll be alright."

Bran doesn't know why him being here would help. Him being by her side hasn't made anything better for her so far. In fact it might have made things worse.

For an hour or so, Jo just lies there, still in pain, and Bran just holds her hand. Eventually though, he starts to drift off. He's not woken again until he feels her starting to shake.

"Jo?" When he opens his eyes, he sees her gasping for breath, eyes rolling back in her head. "Jo!" She's trembling all over now, and Bran doesn't know what to do, he tries to grab her by the shoulders when she starts to seize up and lurch off the bed. "Maester Pycelle! Please, something's happening to her, help–"

"When the door opens, however, it's not Maester Pycelle. It's Jaime Lannister.

"You." And Bran, with a rage and a strength he didn't know he was capable of, rises up from his seat and grabs Lannister by the throat, pushes him against the wall. "You've killed her! You've poisoned her!"

"Ser Brandon–"

"Why?! Couldn't you bear the thought of a bastard replacing your sister? Did you hate my father so much you'd kill her even after his death just for revenge?"

"Bran, you need to calm down."

He stops, staring at Jaime against the wall. He still has his hand around the man's throat, but he's too craven to really squeeze, and Ser Jaime knows that – Bran knows he couldn't have Jaime up against the wall like this unless Jaime let him. Bran is almost a man grown now, but still, Lannister has been a warrior longer than Bran has even been alive.

Slowly, he relinquishes his hold, staring down at the floor like he did when his mother caught him climbing as a child. Ser Jaime sighs, gently closing a hand on Bran's shoulder, and Bran looks up to face him once more.

"No, I wasn't trying to kill your sister," Jaime says. "And I didn't poison her – I gave her the poison, yes, but she chose to drink it herself. I just wanted to help, but I told her it would be dangerous."

"And she told me," Bran mutters. He knew that, he knew there was a risk it would kill her, and he let her do it anyway. Because he had no choice. It was let her kill herself or let Robert kill her.

"It's alright, Bran, I understand," Ser Jaime says. _Do you?_ Bran wants to ask, but then he remembers what Jo said about his sister. "Every time Cersei took moon tea, I was always so scared. Sometimes I wanted to talk her out of it, but she never listened."

"Ser Jaime," Bran says slowly, "is this – was that how she–"

"How my sister died? No." Bran waits for Jaime to explain how Queen Cersei did die, but he doesn't. "And it won't be how your sister dies either. It'll hurt, and it'll be terrifying, but it will not kill her."

"How do you know?!"

Jaime smirks and shrugs. "I have a hunch."

"That's not good enough!"

"Maybe not, but it's the best you've got."

All the fight goes out of Bran then, he slumps over, staring at the Baratheon black carpet. "I'm just so worried about her," he mutters. "I'm always worried about her. I keep wishing there was something I could do for her, and I never can do anything. I don't know what to do."

Gently, Jaime places a finger under Bran's chin, tips his head up to look him in the eye once more. "No," he says. "And you never will."

Bran flinches, but then Jaime looks over his shoulder. "The shaking's stopped," he says. "You should go check on her."

He blinks at first, and then Bran understands what that means. He forgets all about Lannister and rushes back to Jo's side, and he can't be sure whether to be horrified or relieved at hearing her groan in pain again. He hates the thought that she's in pain, but – she's alive.

Quickly, he checks her heartbeat – it's faster than normal, but it's regular, it doesn't sound like it will give up any second. She's still breathing. "Jo?" he asks.

She cracks open an eye. "Bran," she whispers, and then she gives him a weak smile.

Bran smiles back. She's still alive. Right now, she is alive.

* * *

When Jo wakes in the morning, she finds Bran asleep by her side, curled against her. It makes her think of the way he used to sneak into her bed when he'd had a nightmare, but didn't want to admit it to his mother and father. "Bran?" she whispers, and his eyes snap open instantly.

"Jo!" he says, and the relief in his voice is painful to listen to. Her blood has seeped right through his clothing, but he doesn't even seem to notice. "You're alright?"

She nods. "Yeah, I – think I am." She's as surprised as anyone. She doesn't remember much of what happened last night, but she remembers how much it hurt, how afraid she was she was going to die. And Bran. She remembers Bran being by her side through all of it, holding her hand, refusing to leave. "Thank you. For staying," she mutters, and he shakes his head.

"What kind of brother would I be if I left?" he asks. He stares at her a long moment, and then lets out a sob. She wants to reach out and comfort him, but before she can he's kissing her forehead. "I'm so glad you're okay."

Of course he is. Jo can't imagine what it was like, watching her teeter on the edge of death and not being able to do anything about it. Of course, it was no slouch being the one to teeter on the edge of death, but still. "Jo," Bran chokes out, "please promise me we won't have to do all that again. Please. I don't care what you have to do, chop Robert's dick off in his sleep if you have to, but – it almost killed you, Jo. I know I'm being selfish, but – I can't watch you die, I just can't."

Jo stares up at him, lost for words. Gods, she wishes she could make that promise. But Robert is still her husband, and if he plants his seed in her – how could she possibly keep it?

* * *

When the king returns, he's informed his wife lost a child. He seems surprised to hear she was pregnant in the first place, but the news doesn't seem to grieve him. He probably doesn't believe it was his anyway.

Bran tries to put the whole thing out of his head, but he cannot. How could he, when he had to watch his sister almost die at her own hand just to be sure she wouldn't die at her husband's instead? He's never seen Jo look so weak. It feels wrong. His big sister was always so tough and strong, no man should be able to take that from her.

One night he finds himself drinking with Jaime Lannister again. It does not take much wine to loosen his tongue. "You know," he says, "we don't know it would have looked like a Targaryen. Maybe we would have gotten lucky. Maybe it would have looked like a Baratheon. Maybe it would have looked like a Stark."

Ser Jaime smiles to himself. "Maybe," he says. "But if only you could be sure."


	6. The Book of the Smith

**The Book of the Smith**

If it had been Robert's idea to have Arya and Theon visit, Bran would be terrified. But it wasn't. Instead it was Stannis Baratheon, as Master of Ships, who thought the new lord of the Iron Islands should be brought to the capital as a public show of loyalty, and so Stannis could get the measure of the man, and see whether the Iron Fleet under his command would be a reliable asset for the crown. Bran's not sure this is a good idea, because of Theon and his sister apparently have a complicated co-rulership going on after their father's death, and because he cannot imagine two men belonging in the same room less than Theon and Stannis Baratheon, but being a mere knight (if the queen's brother), he's not going to mention it. Robert only seems to go along with the plan to shut his brother up, and so Bran is not terrified. Afraid, certainly, but not terrified.

He does not get to wait for their arrival. He is merely a humble knight, but one who's still quick as a monkey, and manages to hide up in the balcony overseeing everything. Jo looks up, briefly, and does not look at all surprised when she spots him, giving a quick smile before putting back on her solemn queen's face, lest anyone else notice.

She's recovered well from losing ( _from getting rid of, because she had to, because he would have killed her if she didn't_ ) the baby. It was months ago, and no-one – not even Joffrey in his usual cruel taunting – ever speaks of it, and sometimes Bran doubts it happened at all. It haunts him though, watching her writhe in pain like that, watching her balance on the precipice between life and death, and knowing he'd let her do it, except not really, because he had no choice. Jaime Lannister's words keep echoing at him.

Jaime Lannister is there, with the rest of the Kingsguard, because that is what they do, they guard the king. If he spies Bran, he gives no hint of it.

The arrival takes awhile, because the Ironborn are clearly unused to this, of having to adjust to King's Landing and its formalities, and they resent it. Bran can empathise, a little. But from the murmurs and grumblings he hears down below, he thinks they resent their new lord for it, and that worries him. Father did used to worry about what would happen to Theon when he finally returned home.

Eventually, the ironborn all get it together, and the procession, well, proceeds, with guards and servants and the rest all taking their places. A wetnurse presents Jo with her niece, Dara, whose birth they had heard about and were a little stunned by – the thought that Theon and Arya, they had actually, and of course they were married but–

Bran wishes he could go coo and fawn over the baby girl also (and punch that stupid look of disgust on Joffrey's face right off), but he knows he'll get his chance. Later. It is odd, however, that it's not Arya herself presenting the babe to Jo, and Jo looks a little put out about it too. The longer they wait, the longer Arya and Theon do not arrive. The ironborn crowd looks as bewildered by this as does the capital one, and everyone's eyes dart around, searching. Jo looks up at him again, terrified. He can't see what Robert looks like.

Bran's heart starts to race. What have they done to her?

Everyone will start looking soon, but no-one will look as fast as him. He crawls back up, and tries to breathe.

* * *

It doesn't take him long to find something; he's outside, next to the stables when he hears two people – arguing?

"We're gonna be late."

"S'already took weeks to get us here, what difference will ten minutes make?"

"It wouldn't have taken so long if we'd travelled by road."

"Shut up."

"This is a bad idea."

"You're a bad idea."

"Am not! You're the one who married me."

"Not by choice."

"Oh really? Were you forced into it against your will? Made to _submit_?"

"I don't submit to anyone."

"Don't you? I thought you were well known for bending the knee–"

There's a thud that makes Bran jump, that makes him think of Robert and his habit of throwing things around, things like his wife. Then a pause, and a smaller, softer thump that just confuses him. Someone groans and mutters "Well get on with it." Then a gasp.

"Show you bending the knee," the other person grumbles, only to yelp in pain – for some reason – and Bran has no idea what's going on, so he ducks into the stable to figure it out.

What he sees there makes his eyes go wide. His sister, Arya, up on a bale of hay with her legs spread and her smallclothes discarded, skirts around her waist, and Theon Greyjoy – her husband, but still, _Theon Greyjoy_ – kneeling between her legs.

Bran is frozen and bright red, and Arya's eyes are closed as she leans back and pulls Theon's hair very roughly, tugs him closer. "Patience," he murmurs against her, and she – very gently – kicks him.

"My sister's waiting for your fucking patience–" she's opened her eyes to argue though, and so over Theon's shoulder she sees Bran. Her eyes go wide and she tugs his hair again. "Fuck, fuck, Theon!"

He laughs. "Love, I'm flattered but I haven't even started–" so she pulls harder, and oh, that's what that yelp was about, and finally he turns his head and spots Bran also. Theon glances back and forth between his wife and his brother by law, not getting up off his knees, looking just like a deer who just spotted a bow. Then, after a moment of this, he grins.

"Hello Bran," he says.

Arya smacks his shoulder.

"Ow!" says Theon, even though Bran is certain it did not actually hurt – from the way he's smiling at her. "Such violence, my lady."

Arya narrows her eyes at him. "Call me that again, and I'll cut your dick off."

"I am entirely sure you won't do that."

She glares, but then pulls her skirts down and turns her attention to Bran. "What are you doing here?" she asks.

"I could ask the same thing," he says, even though really, it's very obvious what they were doing here. "The procession. You didn't show up. We were getting worried."

Arya glares down at Theon. "Told you," she says. He shrugs.

"They can wait," he says, brazen, "my wife and I had urgent matters to attend to."

"Your cock is not an urgent matter."

"No, but your cunny is, apparently–"

"Um?" Bran interrupts this talk, because he's pretty sure he doesn't want to listen to any more of it (Lannister's words echo). "None of this is an urgent matter, Jo just wants to be sure you're alright, go?"

He should be angry at them for causing them all this worry just so they could fuck in the stables, but really he's too relieved Arya's alright. He is confused though. They're married, so he probably shouldn't be surprised by them fucking, but wedding and bedding is one thing – this though, they have better things to be doing, surely it can wait–

Arya sighs, offering a hand to her husband to help him up off his knees, and once he is he keeps holding her hand to help her up off the straw. "Might want to check your hair for it," he whispers, and she snorts.

"You can talk." And he brushes the straw out of his hair, even though she has to stand on her tippy-toes to do so. For a moment, they just look at each other, and Bran looks at them, and they don't notice, they don't notice anything outside themselves.

* * *

When Bran leads them back to the hall, everyone – greenlander and ironborn alike – looks surprised. Stannis Baratheon looks like he's about to pop a blood vessel (but Bran hates thinking that, because it makes him think of Father, and how Father died, so he banishes the thought). "They were – in the stables," he explains, and if everyone didn't know what he meant by those words, they can probably tell by the way he blushes when he says them. There are some titters from the courtiers, whereas the Iron Islanders mostly give frustrated – but almost affectionate – groans, suggesting this might not be uncommon. Theon stands quite proud of himself. Jo looks to Arya, bewildered, and Arya looks a little embarrassed, but then just shrugs. Bran's not looking at any of them though. He's looking at Robert.

 _What will he think? Will he not stand for another man touching 'his Lyanna', even if it's her husband?_

Robert laughs.

"Fair enough then!" he roars, and Bran watches Jo flinch, and Bran hates himself because Robert knows exactly what he meant, and Bran hates that he gave him that idea, of Arya–

Theon laughs – less than comfortably – and walks forward to shake the man's hand. They have met before, at Winterfell, but Bran wonders whether Robert remembers.

When he turns from Robert to Jo, there's a moment's awkward hesitation before he bows to her, then kisses her cheek politely, for whatever their actual relationship she's still the queen. "Lord Greyjoy," she says, and Bran imagines what his seven year old self would have thought if someone told him he would live to see the day where Jo said that without a trace of irony (although he wishes his imaginary someone would tell his seven year old self more important things). "Your daughter is beautiful."

Inexplicably, Theon looks aghast. "What – don't tell me the idiots introduced you to her without me?"

Jo raises an eyebrow. "Well you were–" she glances briefly at Arya, who does not blush even as Bran does, "–busy."

Theon curses under his breath, which Bran doesn't think a mere lord is meant to do in the presence of the queen. "Give 'er here," he mutters, snatching Dara out of the nurse's arms. "Some things a man ought to do for himself, and introducing his children is one of them." Arya gives a fond sigh as Theon wraps their daughter in his arms, and she gives a happy gurgle, reaching up to pinch his nose. "Yeah, that's right, that's your daddy's nose," he mutters inanely, and Arya laughs. "See, isn't she beautiful?"

"She is," Jo says. "I just said that."

"Yeah, but I have to say it, there's a system," Theon explains. Arya and Jo simultaneously roll their eyes. "She looks just like her mother though. All the men in Westeros will want to marry this one."

"She'll slice them in half with her sword," Arya warns. "She'll be a warrior. Asha and I are making sure of it."

"I ever say she wouldn't be?" Theon asks. "With my beauty and your battle prowess, she'll be unstoppable."

Arya laughs at that, and some of the ironborn look decidedly suspicious, and Theon must have gotten more comfortable with the idea of women warriors since the last time Bran saw him but then again, Bran supposes being married to Arya would do that to you.

"Can I hold her?" asks Jo.

Theon blinks, and then he and Arya say, simultaneously, "of course."

Joffrey laughs at that, but Bran gets distracted from wanting to punch him by the flicker of something he sees cross Robert's eye.

Jo takes the babe into her arms, and it smiles at her. "See, that's your aunt Jo," Theon says. "We don't actually like each other, so you don't have to either, but you have to pretend because she's the queen and if you're mean to her she'll have your head."

That makes Jo laugh, and Bran can't help but think _if only_.

* * *

Baby Dara is at the welcoming feast, because apparently Theon insisted; Arya rolls her eyes as she explains it, how Theon barely lets the girl out of his sight long enough to go piss. Bran thinks of Jo's children, up in their rooms because they're allegedly too young (Betta is seven now, nearing eight, and Bran happily feasted with any visiting lord at that age) and thinks maybe it's good they're not here to see this. Maybe it would be too cruel to make them watch the way Lord Greyjoy dotes on his daughter.

Stannis Baratheon, again, looks like his brains might start running out if his nose at any second, and Renly Baratheon, who showed no interest in the child before, now starts cooing over her seemingly just to antagonise his brother. But Bran isn't watching them. His eyes are on King Robert, who acts the same as he always does at these things, staining his beard with wine and groping the serving wenches – shaming his sister. But Jo barely seems to notice, and Bran supposes he does a lot worse than shame her.

Somewhere between the fifth and ninth wench, Robert gets a moment to himself and his eyes go to Arya and Theon, where Arya has rolled her eyes and taken the babe into her arms to feed her, unashamedly bearing her breast in front of everyone, glaring at Theon as he tries to give advice, over which breast Dara prefers and how long she should suckle at each. There is a flash of something in Robert's eyes, like recognition, and Bran doesn't recognise a damn thing but he reaches for his knife just in case. Across the table Jo meets his eyes, worried, but warning. Arya however looks across the room, babe still at her teat, and takes Robert's gaze with defiance.

The moment passes. A pretty redhead offers Robert more wine, and he takes it before he starts trying to get a name out of her.

Bran lets go of his knife, and sighs.

* * *

Theon's busy doing lord things for most of the visit, and so Arya spends all her time with Bran and Jo, laughing and catching up, exploring the Red Keep, getting to know her nieces. They all adore her, especially Betta, who Arya teaches to shoot arrows before the brink of dawn so they won't get caught. Jo sighs when she sees this, but Arya grins and shrugs and Bran can't help but laugh. Somehow, he ends up taking Betta back to her rooms.

When he tucks her between the sheets and tells her that she ought to at least pretend to be asleep before her maids wake her, she smiles at him and says: "I like aunt Arya."

He grins. "I'm glad." He can't say he's surprised though; Arya's always been good at making friends.

"Do you think – when I'm older – Father would let me go live with her, and uncle Theon, on the Iron Islands?"

Bran stops, stunned. Does Betta want to leave that badly? But when he thinks about it, of course she does, given the way she gets treated here – she wants to leave as badly as Bran does. But this is the only home she's ever known. Of course, under ordinary circumstances Bran would say of course, fostering is so natural, and while there might be some concern over sending a princess of the Seven Kingdoms to stay with a people so misliked and mistrusted, Arya would never let anyone hurt Jo's daughter, and it would help them welcome the Ironborn back into the fold. But these are not ordinary circumstances, and Bran knows Robert is too ashamed of his daughters to let them go. He will keep them here until he dies, and never once want anything to do with him.

"I'm – I'm not sure," he lies, and he thinks she knows. "But you – you should probably think about what you're asking for. The Iron Islands are a tough place, Betta, I'm not sure they're right for a girl like you."

"I can be tough!" says Betta, and of course she's tough. She's always been tough. She's always had to be. But she sighs. "You might be right though," she says. "I couldn't leave Mother like that. Or Anna or Dae." A pause. "I wish you were my father."

"What?"

"You're a better one than Father is!" she says. "You're a better everything than Father. You'd never hurt Mother, would you? And look at this, tucking me into bed and trying to comfort me. He'd never do that. If only you were my father, we could leave this stupid place and go to Winterfell with uncle Robb, or the Iron Islands with aunt Arya, or – or anywhere else where people aren't so awful."

"Betta..." gently, he runs his fingers through her Targaryen blonde hair, "...I'm your uncle."

Another pause, and then she sighs. "I know," she says with a sullen pout. "Uncle Bran, you're all grown up, right?" He's not even sixteen, he wouldn't say that, but he supposes from her perspective. "Tell me: is the world this stupid to everyone, or am I special?"

He can't help but laugh. "I do think you're singularly unlucky," he admits. "But realising the world is just horrible and cruel and stupid – that's called growing up. You just had to do it a bit early."

She huffs and lies back in her bed as the dawn sneaks in through the window. He smiles at her. "Sleep, little one," he says before he kisses her brow and walks out.

Perhaps it would not be the worst of all possible things, to be her father.

* * *

When Bran hears the sound of vomiting coming from someone's bedchambers, his immediate response is panic. No, not Jo, not again. Then he realises he's nowhere near Jo's rooms, instead he's outside some of the finest guest rooms, where Theon and Arya are staying. He frowns, and knocks on the door. "Arya? Is everything alright in there?"

A groan and a grumble. "Fuck," Arya mutters before he hears her spill her guts again.

"Is it alright if I come in?"

"...Fine."

Bran opens the door to see Arya perched on the end of the bed with a bucket in front of her, wiping sick off her chin with the sleeve of her lovely blue gown, looking astonishingly miserable. "Urgh," she says.

"Are you sick?"

She snorts. "Sick in the head maybe, for letting the bastard do this to me," she says. "He'll be all over me as soon as I tell him too, telling me to lie on the bed, that the fire's too hot, or too cold, or I'm not drinking enough water, or I'm drinking too much water, or or something. One day, he'll convince himself that I need lemons or something right now or else the baby's going to die, and that'll probably be how we go to war with Dorne."

"Oh," Bran says, taking a second to comprehend. Then he laughs, and tries not flinch when he remembers how it turned out last time he learned his sister was with child. "Couldn't you just ask Sansa for the lemons?"

"Maybe, but you know Theon, he'd have to make a grand gesture out of it," Arya says, rolling her eyes with a fond smile. Bran blinks.

"Hang on, how old is Dara now anyway?"

"About two months?" Arya says. "Theon could probably give you an exact number of days."

Bran looks back and forth between her face and her belly, not really swollen yet, but perhaps a little rounder than the skinny frame he remembers. He didn't think anything of it when he first saw her. "...Well that was fast," he says, and she laughs.

"Yeah, well – he wouldn't do it once Dara was almost here, he was too afraid of hurting her, but that wasn't really easy for either of us – so once she was and it was safe again, um, we might have gotten a little carried away."

"Okay, Arya, I'm glad you're happy, but there are some things I don't need to know." She laughs again, clearly not ashamed in the slightest, and he pauses. "...You are really happy with him, aren't you?"

Now Arya looks a little bashful. "I mean, don't tell him I said this, because he'll never let me forget it, but: yes, I am." Bran stares at her, and she looks away. "Believe me, I'm as surprised as you are. I really didn't expect it to go like this. I expected him to just keep whoring while we did our best to ignore each other, but then the got to the Iron Islands and realised there were no actual whores there, only saltwives. And I made it very clear to him that he was not kidnapping innocent women just to fuck, and if he really needed to stick it somewhere then I was alright fulfilling my wifely duties. And, well, all that whoring was good for something, because he's not half-bad at it, and easier to get to shut up and do as he's told than I expected, in fact I think he likes it when I make him–"

"Okay Arya remember what we said about the things I don't need to know?"

She laughs. "Right. Sorry." A pause. "But I mean, it's not just sex. It was at first, but – when the baby was coming, he was so excited, and so scared. He wanted it to be perfect, he wanted to be perfect. He loved it so much. I didn't know there was that much love in him. And he loved me, because I'd given him the chance, the chance to make a family of us. I guess because he didn't really have a family before. When I had Dara, I was a bit afraid he'd be disappointed it was a girl – you know, it is Theon. But no. He was just so happy to be a father, I could have pushed a rock out of my cunt and he'd have said it was the prettiest, strongest, bravest rock in the Seven Kingdoms."

Bran smiles at that, even as he thinks of Robert, of how happy Jo said he was when she first became with child, and how it all turned to ash when the child came out wrong. "And his sister is amazing, honestly, I'd might rather have married her," Arya adds. "But as is... yeah, I'm really happy. Who knows, maybe Father could have made a better match, but the one he made is pretty good."

"Gods," Bran chuckles to himself, "he actually made you fall in love with him. Fucking you would have been one thing, but now Jo really is going to kill him."

Arya laughs again, but then falls silent, looking down at her belly and her vomit. That is starting to stink. "I'm going to have to tell her about this, aren't I?" she asks.

Bran purses his lips together. "Well if you're throwing up like this, I don't know how you're going to keep it secret, unless you want to make everyone think you're deathly ill."

She sighs. "It's not fair," she says. "Theon was a dick who turned out to be a good husband. Why couldn't King Robert be the same?"

He blinks, confused, not sure what she does and does not know, but then she looks him in the eye. "I saw him, Bran. When you visited Winterfell. I saw him beat her right in the middle of the kitchens." Bran flinches. He thought something had happened at Winterfell, he'd seen the bruise blossom, but he'd been unable to bring himself to ask. He should have asked. "I would have stabbed his eyes out for it, but–"

"But she told you not to," Bran finishes for her, and sighs. "I know. We've had that conversation a dozen times."

Arya looks like she might cry. "We have to help her," she says.

"I'm trying." Bran feels like he might cry. "I keep trying. I know you, or Robb, or Sansa could come in with all the might of the Iron Islands, or the North, or Dorne, but – she could never. She'd never risk our lives to save her own. She'd much rather let Robert kill her than let him kill us."

Arya winces and looks away. "It's all Mother's fault."

"Please don't say that."

"Isn't it true?"

Maybe it is. Maybe it's Mother's fault for always hating Jo so. Maybe it's Father's fault, for agreeing to the marriage, for having been the king's friend in the first place. Maybe it's Theon's fault for being so unchivalrous to Jo, giving her a bad idea of what it meant to be an unwed bastard girl. Maybe it's Sansa's fault for having given them all such a romantic idea, of being a queen, a princess and a knight. Maybe it's Bran's fault for embracing that idea. Maybe it's Jo's fault for embracing that idea too, for being so willing to give herself over in the vague, desperate hope of being something better.

Except no, not really. "It's not anyone's fault but the bastard who keeps beating his wife," Bran explains, and Arya stares a moment, and sighs.

"I guess you're right," she says. "It's just, I wish I could blame someone I know. I wish I could blame myself. Because then I could control it. I can't just let it happen, Bran, she's my favourite sister and – she's asking me to just let this monster slowly kill her. We have to do something. It might not be our fault, but it's our responsibility."

Bran remembers that talk he had with Mother in the godswood, how he did want to blame her. She certainly blamed herself. They both wanted to feel like they could do something, but they couldn't. Maybe Father could have. Bran remembers the letter he wrote to Father, a child assuming telling Daddy could fix anything. And it killed him. Maybe Mother blames herself for that too, maybe she thinks she lost her husband because she could not love his babe.

But it wasn't Mother's fault, and Bran realises, it wasn't his either. _I told my father what was wrong, because I was fourteen and frightened. What could be more natural? What else could I have done? I didn't know it would kill him. If Robert didn't hurt Jo, I would never have wrote that letter._

He looks up at Arya, and sees her, always so wild and strong, on the edge of tears. He can't let that happen; Arya is too strong to cry, if he sees her cry then he will cry, and he is not as strong, if he starts crying he might never stop. And so, out of the sheer need to say something, Bran says something he really shouldn't:

"I might have a plan."

Arya looks up, bewildered. "You do?"

"No, I might. And it's not one I can tell you." _Because if I did you would hate me._ "And it's not really a plan, it's barely even a thought, it might not even work–"

Arya suddenly throws her arms around him. Bran doesn't understand why. "You do what you have to do. You save our sister." She smothers a sob against his neck, and then Bran understands. _She thinks I will kill him. She thinks I'll kill the king, and be killed myself, and this might be the last time she ever sees me. And she's giving me her blessing._

Bran can't bear it, and pulls out of the embrace. He looks down at the bucket on the floor. "Should we get a maid to come clean this up?"

"Huh?" But Arya comes out of it quickly, realising the talk about all the horror in their lives is done. "No, it's fine. I can deal with it myself," she says, and stands and makes for the washbasin. "I mean, Theon's going to spend the next nine months making servants' lives hell trying to take care of me. Don't really need to get started for him."

* * *

It's not until the last few days of the visit that he gets to spend a lot of time with Theon. They find themselves sitting in the gardens together, Theon complaining about the heat. "That's what you get for wearing black to King's Landing," Bran says, and Theon brushes him off, adjusting the gold chain lain artfully over his tunic. His fashion sense hasn't changed much, except his colour palette has gotten decidedly limited. He's trying to dress like what he imagines an Ironborn king – sorry, lord – to be. His people don't seem impressed though.

Bran's white tunic – not a Kingsguard cloak, not yet – reflects the heat much better, but he's still uncomfortable. "So," he says. "Back to the Iron Islands soon."

"Well the journey's a bit long but – yeah, soon enough." Theon smirks, and reaches over to rustle Bran's hair. "Missed you, kid."

Bran wrinkles his nose and readjusts his hair. He's not sure the feeling's mutual. "And you're sure your sister is going to let you back into port, right?"

Theon laughs at that. "Yeah, I'm sure. Though she might pretend not for a couple of days, but that's just to make everyone relieved when she finally does. Arya would cut her tits off if she actually tried anything."

"...I have no idea how this co-lordship thing of yours works."

"Barely, is the answer," Theon says. "But we keep the balance going pretty well. Everyone who hates the thought of being ruled by a woman, calls me their lord. Everyone who hates the thought of being ruled by a–" _greenlander_ , Bran knows is the word, but he knows that Theon can't say that, "–by me, calls her their lady. And we let everyone think we hate each other and are plotting to get rid of each other, we can keep each other alert of any plots that are going on. And everyone's so invested in the lord or the lady, my uncles or anyone else can't get a foot in to overthrow the both of us."

"And does that... work?" It sounds horribly complicated.

"Well it's worked so far," says Theon. "Never would have happened without your sister though. We would have torn each other apart, except she liked Asha from the start and made me realise fucking her over would be a good way to get my throat slit. Now we just need to have kids we can marry to each other, and we're golden."

Bran raises an eyebrow. "This system still sounds liable to collapse at any moment."

Theon sighs. "Look, I'm not saying it's perfect," he admits. "But we manage. There are worse things."

"I suppose," Bran mutters. He looks down at his hands, kneads them in his lap. He imagines Arya off in this strange, foreign land, teetering on the edge of civil war with her holding it together – and despite that happy, with her loving husband and baby and sister by law who clearly adores her. Bran knows he shouldn't be bitter, but still, it just doesn't make sense.

"Bran? Everything alright?"

"Hmm? Of course." He's never been a good liar, he's staring at his feet again, and Theon sighs and tucks a finger under his chin, tilting his head up to look him in the eye.

"Kid..." he says, strangely stern, "look, I don't know how to say this but – if you and Jo are in trouble... you know I could help, right?"

Bran's jaw falls open, staring. Oh gods, what does he know? What has Arya told him? He shouldn't be so surprised; they are married, happily married. _She might have told him I have a plan_. And if he's spoken of it aloud, maybe it really is a plan now. But Theon might actually figure it out.

"Might be against the point of this visit, but you do realise – if the choice comes down to you two or a mad fat drunk bastard of a king, well, it's not a choice at all."

Bran lets his mouth hang open some more as he struggles for something to say. Theon is offering them an out – and maybe Jo would actually take this one? After all, she and Theon never liked each other. Maybe she'd be willing to risk his life. It's worth asking.

But no, it's not, because Arya. Jo might risk Lord Greyjoy, but not Lady Greyjoy, and truth be told Bran knows she'd hate herself if she got her sister's husband killed. So that's another escape they're denied.

He's still working out his answer when a voice interrupts: "Greyjoy!"

Theon turns his head and smirks. "My lady," he says. "And what can I do for you this fine day?"

Arya rolls her eyes, but doesn't respond to the provocation. "It's Dara," she says. "The king's nurses are trying to put a cotton nappy on her."

"What?" Theon's smirk falls. "But I told them, I was perfectly clear, you have to use linen or else she gets a rash!"

"I know, but they won't listen to me!" Arya says. "Go deal with it, will you?" And Theon charges off without another word, leaving his wife to call after him, "they're in King Robert's solar!"

Bran blinks, confused. "What is Dara doing in the king's solar?"

Arya snorts. "Being another name for Stannis Baratheon," she says, and then Bran is even more confused. "More diplomatic stuff. I got told to go find my husband, and I knew he'd be an ass about it if I told him it was his lordly duties, but if I mentioned the baby he'd go running."

"Ah," says Bran. "Won't he be mad at you once he realises?"

"Probably, but then we'll just have amazing–"

"Again, Arya."

"Sorry."

Bran sighs and looks back down at his hands, thinking. "Is it weird?" he asks, not sure if he wants to.

"Is what weird?"

He looks up again. "Being married to Theon," he explains. "I mean, he's practically our brother."

Arya looks a little uncomfortable, but then shrugs. "It was at first," she says. "Our wedding night, I remember, he took his cock out and the urge to throw a snowball at it and giggle was–" she laughs a little then at the memory. "But I suppose I got used to it, after awhile. I mean, we still bicker, we still practice archery together, we mostly bicker about who's better at archery. We still pretend not to care about each other when everyone knows we do." She sighs. "Maybe it's not that different."

"Maybe," Bran muses, Lannister's words echoing as she walks away.

* * *

Arya and Theon pack the last of their own things – Arya insists on it, and so Theon has to as well to maintain his pride. Bran thinks she can't have told him about the baby yet, because he doesn't think he'd let her so easily if she had. Bran himself is a little concerned, which is why he's – not spying, but observing.

Or at least he's trying to, but his plan is interfered with slightly by someone else being on the balcony.

"Your Grace?"

King Robert turns around, wineskin in his hand, and looks surprised. "Boy," he says, and then remembers the name. "Bran. Ser Brandon. What are you doing here?"

"I was – seeing my sister off." Technically, they've already made their private goodbyes (and Bran forced himself not to wonder if Arya was fighting back tears). It's the big procession they're waiting for now. He has no reason to be here, but King Robert doesn't question him. Maybe he's too drunk.

The king falls silent and goes back to watching Arya and Theon down below, and Bran's stomach starts to churn a little. Robert's not tried anything with Arya while she's been here, perhaps because he remembers what happened with Sansa and Joffrey, perhaps because even he's smart enough to realise the king shouldn't make a pass at the wife of a lord whose people have already rebelled once. But still, Bran can't help but worry, that in a drunken haze Robert will do something at the last possible moment.

Arya has her skirt knotted around her knees so she can push a small box up on top of their things proper (Bran is entirely sure nine tenths of the boxes are Theon's). "You are too short for that, let me," Theon tells her, and she sticks her tongue out and does it anyway. Then, as she climbs back down, she goes a little dizzy and Theon rushes over to catch her. "Are you alright?"

"Fine," says Arya, taking a second to catch her breath, and then she brushes him off. "I wasn't going to fall."

Theon raises an eyebrow. "Just in case."

"I would have thought you'd like to laugh at me if I did fall."

He shrugs. "Well, yeah, but I don't want to break you. Then I'd have to go back to your family for a new wife and honestly, I'm not sure how happy Quentyn Martell would be about that."

Arya slaps him across his chest and grins. Theon grins back and kisses her hair, at which she pulls a face, and then darts off to check on Dara in a wetnurse's arms and make sure no ill has come to her in the ten minutes it's been since he saw her last.

"That should have been us," mutters Robert.

Bran is caught off-guard. "What?"

The king turns around and faces him. "Me and Lyanna. We were just like that," he says. "Alright, I wasn't quite as well dressed as the Greyjoy lad, but – I was a handsome, arrogant little shit, and Lyanna... and Lyanna. We could have fought like that. We could have been that happy."

For a moment, Bran feels a flicker of pity. Perhaps Robert is right. Perhaps he and Lyanna could have been happy together, in some other world without Rhaegar Targaryen, or Cersei Lannister, or Joanna Snow. Father loved this man once. Surely there must have been some good in him?

Robert sighs. "You don't have to worry, son. I won't lay a hand on your sister."

The flicker dies, and in its place rises a great flame of rage, the one that's been smoldering over a year now. "Won't you," Bran says, letting the words bite. "My full-blooded sister, perhaps. But tell me, Your Grace, do you think I only feel half the pain when I see the bruises on my half-sister's face? Do you think I only feel half sick when I think of how she lets you into her bed no matter how little she wants you, because she thinks it is her duty? Do you think I only want to stick my sword halfway through your stupid fat guts?"

King Robert's spine stiffens, and Bran freezes on the spot. _What have I done? I've just threatened the king with death. He'll have me killed._ Slowly, Robert turns around. _He'll have me killed and then there'll be no-one to help Jo–_

But then Robert laughs.

It's a sad laugh, a bitter laugh, but not one that promises retribution. "You're just like your father," says Robert as he sups from his skin, "more honourable than you are smart." He takes a longer drink, then laughs again. "Of course, I'm one to talk. I never was either of those things."

Robert turns back around, and Bran's rage is stuck in his throat; he cannot quell it but he cannot make it fade into something manageable either. "I know lad, don't worry," says Robert. "If I weren't the king, you'd kill me for this. I'd expect nothing less from Ned's son." A pause. "The girl should never have married me."

"She was a fourteen year old bastard who'd been told all her life she'd never amount to anything, when suddenly the king wants her for a wife. What would you expect?"

"She was a damn fool."

"She was fourteen."

Robert sighs and takes another drink of wine. "I wasn't always like this," he says. "Ned – Ned never knew me like this. He'd have never have let me marry her if he did. It was that bloody Lannister woman, she did it to me, her schemes and plots and – if only she could have been–"

"Lyanna?" Bran asks. "Yes, if only Cersei Lannister could have been Lyanna. If only Jo could have. Lyanna's dead! She's been dead for years, and you've ruined two women's lives because they couldn't be some dream girl you barely even knew–"

Bran jumps when the wineskin suddenly crashes into his feet. It doesn't really hurt, but the rage in Robert's eye is terrifying. "You have every right to hate me, son," he growls, "but don't you tell me how I knew my Lyanna."

Part of Bran wants to play the boy again, to cower, to tremble, to beg forgiveness, but then he remembers how Jo faces this man and his implacable rage every day, she has done so for years, and he thinks _I must be tough. I can be as tough as she is._

"I wonder," he asks, "what Lyanna would think of what you've done to her niece?"

Robert turns back around, watching Arya and Theon who have gotten into, of all things, a poking match. Maybe he and Lyanna could have been that happy. And Arya and Theon weren't that happy because they'd been true loves, and if their betrothal hadn't gone through, neither of them could ever have loved another. They hadn't even wanted to marry, Arya had only gone through with it to protect herself, and yet they made a good life out of it all. They knew each other, faults and foibles, and they'd worked around that, aligned their lives just right until it clicked. If they'd each married someone else, they probably wouldn't have fallen in love at all. But they'd married each other, and they'd loved each other, and that was special.

Bran remembers Theon as he was, a lech and a bully. Bran had never really liked him as a child. He thinks it would have been easy for Theon to be terrible, as bad as Robert if not worse, if things had played out slightly differently. But all Theon has ever really wanted was to be loved, and he has managed it, through sheer luck as much as anything else, and that has made him good. Maybe goodness doesn't really mean much if you're never given the chance not to be, but still, Theon has made Arya happy and that is enough for Bran.

 _Arya was wrong_ , Bran realises – Robert is not a monster. He is just a man, who was once a boy who loved a girl, or at least told himself he loved a girl. He is a man who never conquered the pain of losing that girl, or the rage against the people he thinks took her.

And Bran realises, he doesn't care.

He doesn't care why Robert does it. He doesn't care if he feels guilty. He doesn't care if there was once good in him. He doesn't care if there still is. He doesn't care if Father loved him.

All he cares about is that this is the man who is slowly killing his sister, and Bran will break any oath and damn himself in the eye of any god to stop him.

"I told Father," he blurts out, not quite sure why. He picks up the wineskin, and throws it back to Robert. "What you were doing to Jo. I begged him for help. I think that's what killed him – my mother said when she found his body, the letter was still in his hand."

He wonders what Robert will say. He expects the man to turn around and say something, but he doesn't, he just pauses, drink against from the wineskin, and sighs.

Bran storms off. Nothing has changed. Nothing will change.

* * *

He waits in Jo's chambers for the procession to be over. She looks surprised when she comes in and sees him sitting on her bed. "Bran," she says. "What are you doing here?"

"I wanted to see you," he says, and the words don't sound quite right anymore. "I feel – I feel like I've been avoiding you. I didn't mean to."

She frowns. "I didn't notice anything," she says, and Bran blinks. Alright. Maybe it was his guilt talking. She comes to sit next to him on the edge of the bed. "Is there something you want to talk about?"

There is, eventually, but not tonight. There's no need tonight. "No, I just..." and he laughs a little. "I missed you is all. I love you a lot, big sister."

She gives him a funny smile. "I love you too, little brother."

He embraces her then, because it seems like the thing to do. She seems puzzled, but returns it. For a moment, Bran lets himself forget it all – everything except that she is his sister, and he would do anything for her.

* * *

Bran doesn't sleep well that night. He tosses and turns as his dreams flicker through dozens of images: himself climbing the walls of Winterfell, Arya and Theon bathing in the sea, two boys playing with sticks up in the Eyrie's towers, little Betta sleeping by her mother's side, a silver prince with a dark-haired beauty, a sword going through a ragged old man's back, and a beautiful blonde girl with wicked green eyes.

Through it all, Jaime's words echo:

 _If only you could be sure._


	7. The Book of the Mother

**The Book of the Mother**

Jo is sick again, and that is what begins it. She tries to hide it as always, but Bran sees her, back of her hand pressed to her mouth in the middle of breakfast. He feels sick too.

 _He's done it again,_ he thinks. _He's come to her in the night and planted his seed in her and now she'll have to – it's my fault, I've been putting it off, too worried about my fucking honour and now she might die because of it._

"Excuse me," says Jo, putting down her spoon and making her way to her chambers, presumably. Bran wants to follow her, but doesn't. Still, he drops his knife and fork, knowing he will not eat for awhile yet.

* * *

A knock comes on the door just as she wipes her mouth with a towel. She frowns, a little puzzled, but discards the cloth in a basket for the servants and answers. "Come in."

Bran walks through the door with purpose, a worried frown etched in his mouth, brow furrowed so deep she fears it might get stuck like that. Of course it's Bran. _Gods, he's gotten tall,_ she thinks as he almost blocks out the sunlight streaming through the doorway. He seems so much older now. He can't be more than sixteen years, and yet you wouldn't know it to look at him.

"Bran." She smiles. "What's going on?"

He tries, but he does not manage to smile back. "You're sick," he declares.

She shrugs and tries to brush it aside, not wanting to worry him. "I was just now," she concedes, and his frown only deepens. Behind him, he shuts the door, and starts to pace back and forth in front of her. It doesn't make her stomach feel any less woozy.

Suddenly he stops, and looks her in the eye. "What are you going to do?"

She blinks, not quite understanding, and he carries on before she can reply: "Have you spoken to Jaime Lannister?" He's chewing his lip, like his mother, like Arya, and wait, what– "Maybe, maybe if you don't drink so much this time, it will be safer–"

"No, Bran, it's not–"

"But maybe it won't work at all, I don't know, I'm no Maester, I'm just – oh gods, I shouldn't have let this happen, I should have stopped him coming to your rooms, I should have–"

"Bran!"

He falls silent and stares at her. She takes a deep breath and wraps her arms around herself – she was really hoping to avoid this conversation. "I'm not – it's not another baby," she tells him, and she watches as the stoic mask he was just wearing – Father, she realises, he was trying to look like Father – crumble, leaving only her little brother before her. "I thought it was at first. But then I went to see Grand Maester Pycelle – or well, he sort of accosted me, telling me he had to examine me before I lost another child. And it turned out – there was no child to be lost, only a stomach bug, one that should pass in a week or so." She pauses. "I'm sorry, I should have told you went I first thought – but I didn't want to worry you."

Bran sighs in relief, a faint smile crossing his lips. "You did worry me," he murmurs. Then he frowns. "Are you sure? I mean, do you really trust Pycelle?"

She shrugs. "Well no, not really, but I don't know why he'd lie?"

Bran doesn't seem to know that either, and so he accepts it, walking slowly closer to her. "I was so scared," he admits, voice breaking on the words, "of what he'd do to you, of what you'd do to yourself so he couldn't–"

"I know," she says, reaching forth and stroking his arm comforting. Truly, he's a man grown now – and yet he'll always be her little brother. She knew it all, was so scared herself, that he'd kill her, that she'd kill herself, that she'd leave her children all alone, that she'd leave Bran all alone and he'd blame himself for it, of course he would. "But it's alright. There's no baby. It's all alright." _For now_ , she thinks but does not say, and from the look on his face she'd say Bran thinks along it with her. She stops and sighs, squeezing his shoulder with one hand. "Come, let's take the girls to the gardens today. Robert should be off with his whores already, he won't notice. Maybe you could help Betta practice her stick-fighting? Since Arya visited she's wanted to do it daily, and I keep worrying she'll take poor Anna's eye out."

Bran smiles at that, but he's hesitating and she doesn't know why. When she reaches out to take his hand, he pulls away.

"No," he blurts out, and she blinks. "I mean – maybe a little later? There's something I have to do first." A pause as she wonders if he's going to elaborate. "There's someone I have to talk to."

She still doesn't really understand, but she nods and lets him go.

* * *

He knows he shouldn't. He gave up this place long ago. He took vows. And yet, he knows there is nowhere else that could possibly give him the peace he needs now.

He goes to the godswood.

Of course it is not a true godswood, there are no weirwoods here, no Heart Tree. Really it's just a garden with ideas above its station. But it's the closest thing Bran has, and so he falls to his knees beneath the great oak with no eyes to watch him with, to judge him with, and prays.

He cannot form his prayer into words, he cannot tell what he is asking the gods for, but he opens his mind to the gods, if they are listening, and lets them hear it all, his fear and his guilt and his fury and his shame, and his love, the deep desperate pure love that could make him do anything, that could make anything of him. Perhaps it is more a scream than a prayer.

A long time he stays there, kneeling in silence, speaking nothing and hearing nothing back. _Perhaps the gods abandoned me when I abandoned them_. But then, after several painful minutes, a voice comes on the wind. He cannot tell whose it is – so much of him wants to believe it's Father, but it's probably just himself – but whoever is talking, Bran listens.

 _Do what you must, Brandon Stark,_ say the gods. _She is your sister, you must protect her, you cannot let her die. Blood binds you. The gods will forgive you. They will forgive all else, before a kinslayer._

Bran isn't sure he believes it. But he takes it, because that is what he needs, permission, if only from himself.

And from Jo, of course.

* * *

Robert is away on one of his hunting trips. Jo thinks little of it, other than being glad the girls have a little more free reign about the Red Keep. Daeria is starting to walk now.

Of course, if the girls get free reign they're going to tire themselves out, and so she's not surprised when she goes to fetch Betta for bed and finds her already asleep, being picked up by her uncle Bran to carry her to bed. "I let her borrow one of my old practice swords," he explains. "Well. I say borrow. I highly doubt she's going to give it back."

Jo laughs at that, and takes Betta out of her brother's arms, and the girl cracks open an eye blearily, smiles, and then falls back asleep against her breast. She's getting heavy now, and Jo slightly regrets taking her out of Bran's arms, but she doesn't complain as she carries Betta back to her chambers, tucks her in and says good evening to the maids. But Bran doesn't leave either. Jo doesn't really understand that, but he's been acting odd for a couple of weeks now, ever since that incident where she turned out not to be pregnant. She supposes she gave him a scare.

Anna and Dae are already in bed, and so she lets Bran follow her back to her own rooms, still not saying a word. _What's wrong?_ she wants to ask him, but somehow she can't force the question past her lips.

Eventually she reaches her door and stops. "So," she says. "Goodnight then?"

He's nervous. She has no idea why but she knows that he is, when he chews his lip like that, and it makes her nervous. "Actually," he says, "I was hoping I could come in for a bit?"

She blinks. "Oh, of course," she says, opening her door, but she has no idea why. He steps inside and closes it behind him, and when she goes to sit on the end of her bed, he doesn't follow her. Instead he just stays by the door, almost like he's afraid of her, and starts pacing back and forth, which doesn't make her any less nervous.

"Bran?" she asks as she starts to get dizzy, "is something wrong?"

He stops, and raises an eyebrow at her. "...Alright, stupid question," she concedes, and he laughs softly. "Still. What's this about?"

Bran purses his lips together, and then suddenly stares down at the floor. "I've had an idea," he mumbles, more to it than to her.

"Any particular sort of idea?"

He looks her in the eye again, chewing his lip. "I think I might have figured out – how to help you. How to help the girls. Maybe."

She averts her eyes. "Please, Bran, not this again," because she can't put herself through that again, how tempting it is, how tempted she is to get everyone she loves killed and she knows she'll give in one day–"

"No, Jo, it's not like that, not this time," suddenly he's beside her on the bed, hand closing over hers firmly. "No-one has to risk their lives for this, no-one other than us even has to know, I won't let our family get hurt, I promise." A pause. "And as much as he deserves it, your fat bastard husband doesn't even die at the end."

She looks back at him, curious. _I won't let our family get hurt._ So he's not going to start a war, he's not going to try and use the armies of the North and the Iron Islands and Dorne against the king. "What then?"

"...First, you have to promise me something." His grip loosens and then tightens, like he's not sure whether he wants to hold her hand or not. What is he so nervous about? "You don't have to agree, of course you don't, but just – whatever you say, promise you won't hate me for it. Okay?"

Despite it all, she can't help but scoff. "Bran, you're my little brother," she says. "I could never hate you."

"Okay." Bran takes a deep breath and, seemingly having made up his mind, holds her hand tighter. "Robert's always hated you because of the children, right? Because they don't look like him, and they don't look like you, they look like Targaryens, like the family that took his Lyanna away."

"He has," Jo says. She knows that. Why is Bran telling it to her?

"So do you think – if you gave him another child, but one that didn't look like a Targaryen. A girl who looked like you, or a boy who looked like Father. Do you think Robert would be kinder then?"

"...Maybe," she says, bewildered. "Probably. But – it's not going to happen; we've had three childen and they've all–"

"I know, I know, but still: three times isn't that many. It could have just been bad luck. If you gave him a dark-haired, grey-eyed babe, who could say that wasn't perfectly normal, more normal than the silver and purple ones?"

"Yes, but – I couldn't know that would be what I'd give him. I couldn't know I'd have a child like that before he got around to beating me to death. I couldn't be sure." She shakes her head. This is his stupidest plan yet. "It's not worth the risk, Bran."

And then Bran leans in closer, biting his lip so hard it's starting to bleed. He whispers: "but what if you could be sure?"

She doesn't understand at first. But then she looks him in the eye, how nervous he is, how scared he was to come anywhere near her, but how much he loves her–

She pulls her hand away.

"Bran," she says, "we can't..."

"I know, I know, I'm sorry, I understand if you're angry but–" _no Bran, I could never be angry at you,_ but she is angry, not at him but at herself, for letting things get to the point where he'd even consider such a thing, even if she has no idea what she could have done differently, "but I can't let this go on, I can't let him do this to you, I don't mind, I don't care what I have to do, I have to protect you, I'm your brother, what's the point of me being here if I can't protect you?"

She shakes her head, unable to comprehend what she's hearing. "He'll kill us both if he ever finds out."

"Then he won't find out."

"It's not that simple!" she says. "Bran, you're my baby brother, I can't let you get yourself killed for me–"

"Jo, _this_ is killing me!" he says, frustration boiling over. It renders her silent. "Being here, watching him – do you think, if he killed you and I did nothing to stop it, I could live with myself?" No, of course he couldn't. Bran is a knight. He was always a little knight she remembers; how could he not try to save a maiden in distress?

(But she is no maiden.)

"I remember when you – drank that tea," Bran says, looking away from her again. "Tea. Poison, really, that's what it is. It almost killed you, and I just – I looked at you, writhing in pain in that bed and I couldn't believe I'd let you do it. I'd murdered you as much as he had."

She stares down at her feet. Will she really let her baby brother commit such a sin, because he feels like he has to, because he thinks it's his duty to protect her?

The thing is, part of her wants to. Because she thinks it just might work, and she is so tired of living like this. She wants to just give Robert what he wants and maybe he'll leave her alone for once. And she loves her children, she always wanted children, and she wants to have one that might have a father – that might have two fathers – to love it too.

But is it worth the risk?

"You're too young," she insists, looking him in the eye again. "Have you ever even–?"

"No," he says. "But I'm willing to go out and buy a whore if that's what it takes."

She can't help but laugh at that, but the mirth dies quickly. "You're only–"

"Sixteen. By most accounts, a man grown." He pauses. "Older than you were."

He's right, damn him he's right. She was married off barely a year after she'd bled. Not that she can claim it was anyone's fault but her own.

"Would it even work?" she mutters, and he looks confused. "I mean – you take after your mother, mostly. What if the babe looked like her?"

"I'm not – I'm not sure," Bran admits. She sighs. "But still, a Tully isn't a Targaryen. It might not make anything better, but it wouldn't make anything worse."

"Unless he realised I'd been unfaithful?"

"He thinks that anyway," Bran says. "And he couldn't prove anything. No-one knows what your mother looks like. It could easily have had red hair and blue eyes, and Robert wouldn't kill you and risk war with the North unless he was absolutely sure."

It doesn't sound like much of an excuse, but it might not matter. Between the two of them, the babe probably would look like Father. Like Father...

She has to look away again. "What would Father think of us?

There's a long silence, until she feels his finger gently tuck underneath her chin, tilt her head up to look at him again. "I don't know," he says. "But he is dead. We aren't. It's just you and me now Jo, and I have to protect you. I'm your brother."

"You're my little brother," she reminds him. "I have to protect you."

"Maybe we can protect each other?"

She can't help but smile as she looks at him, firm and resolute. He is a man grown. He knows what he's doing. That, perhaps, is what she needed to know. "Alright," she says.

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

He smiles back at her, finger still curled underneath her chin, and she wonders whether he's going to kiss her. But before he can, the door swings open.

They jump apart, even if they weren't really doing anything less than innocent (yet), and Jaime Lannister grins when he sees them. "Ah, there you two are," he says. "I was looking for you. Figured you'd choose some place terribly obvious."

"What are you doing here?!" she blurts out in a panic, wondering what he heard, and sure he already knows about the baby and the moon tea, but this is something else–

"Just seeing how you two were getting on, if you'd remembered to lock the door or not. Which you hadn't, so really, you're lucky it was me who came along." Jo doesn't understand. _Did you tell him before me?_ Jo wants to ask Bran, but when she looks at him he seems as bewildered as she is.

"Ser Jaime," Bran says slowly. "We weren't–"

"Yes you were," Jaime says. "But don't worry, I'm not going to tell anyone. I'm here to look out for you poor kids. Really, who do you think gave you the idea?" Bran looks even more bewildered at that, until slowly, realisation seems to cross his face. "You didn't think I knew what I was doing, did you? That naivety won't serve you well here."

"Why should we trust you?" Jo finds herself snapping. "Why should we think you're not going to go squeal to Robert the second you walk out that door?"

He shrugs. "Well, I already gave you the moon tea to get rid of one of his children. If I know Robert, he'd kill us all for that. I sell you out, you'll sell me out in turn." Jo wonders if she would, if her honour would allow that, but either way it's best Ser Jaime think she would. "Besides, if I was planning on betraying you, I wouldn't have let on until after you'd actually done something."

Jo sighs. She can't say the man's right. "Alright, we trust you," she concedes, reluctantly. "Now could you please leave?"

Ser Jaime raises an eyebrow. "What, don't you wish to gaze upon my handsome face so you can forget who you're truly with?" That simply makes her glare at him. "Very well. Someone ought to be playing lookout. Go on, you two, and try to enjoy it."

With that he leaves, ostentatiously locking the door behind him. That leaves Bran and Jo just looking at each other, not entirely sure what just happened.

But of course, everything is still the same. Bran coughs. "So," he says, "should we–?"

Jo nods. "I don't think we'll be brave enough to go through with it if we don't do it now."

"Right." A pause, and then he leans forward and kisses her.

At first, it's not so different from the sort of kiss he would have given her when he was seven, an innocent smack of the lips. It's just longer. But she realises that won't do, and so when she parts her lips for him, she's glad when he takes the encouragement easily. Hesitantly, she lays a hand on his hip to pull him closer, and despite it all he's still just a teenage boy, she can't be surprised when she feels him start to harden against her thigh.

But she is surprised when he breaks the kiss, moving down to press his lips against her jaw and her neck instead. She's always been sensitive there, Robb used to shove snow down the back of her dresses to tease her, and she gasps softly, a rush of heat flooding between her legs. That makes the shame stir once more, and she squirms.

"Bran," she says, "that's not necessary – I mean, all this, to make a baby – you don't have to–"

"Yes I do." He pulls away, staring her straight in the eye, and he always took after his mother but when he fixes his face like that, he looks – gods forgive her – just like Father. "I'm not – I'm not like King Robert. I'm not going to just spend my seed in you and that's it. If we are going to do this, we are going to do it right."

And she is ashamed, but perhaps she is curious. She is curious as to what it would be like to make love to a man who loves her. Because he does love her, and so how he loves her no longer seems to matter so.

She nods and says, "alright." When he returns his mouth to her jawline, sucking gently at her neck – careful not to leave a mark – she doesn't protest. Nor when his hand sneaks around her waist to cup her rear, nor when it undoes her buttons to bare her breasts.

When she moves her skirt aside for him, she does not forget who he is. But she does not mind as much.

* * *

For the next nine moons, Bran is terrified someone will find out. Well for the first few weeks, he is worried it hasn't worked, that they'll have to do it again (and perhaps he's worried because the possibility doesn't terrify him as much as it should). But then Pycelle announces that the queen is pregnant once more, and mutters about how the girl finally came to him at once this time.

Robert seems to think little of the fact, but to his credit, he stays away from Jo for the most part. He doesn't want to let himself beat his wife when she's with child, even if he might not actually believe it's his.

Bran is not there when the babe is born. Robert is off on another hunting trip, which he's told was his habit for all of Cersei's children and most of Jo's (every one but Betta, and that did not go as hoped), and so Bran doesn't see the problem. But Jo talks him out of it. "We can't let anyone be suspicious, Bran," she says, and surely the queen's brother being there wouldn't be so strange? "I'm sorry. I promise I'll bring the babe to see you as soon as I can."

She is the queen, after all, and she's his big sister – she probably knows best. And so he nods, and she smiles and kisses him on the cheek. He's taken aback for a second. Neither of them has dared kiss one another since – since (he kissed her everywhere that night, until she had to bury her face in a pillow so as not to scream, and afterwards as he awkwardly redressed himself he wondered why). But it doesn't feel odd. It feels much the same as it always did, years ago back at Winterfell, and he remembers what Arya said. _Maybe it's not that different._

So Bran spends the night his sister brings his child into the world not with them, but with Jaime Lannister, drinking until that swirling mess in his stomach of fear and shame and hope settles slightly. And somewhere between his fifth and eighth mug of ale (if this babe does nothing else, it has increased his capacity to drink massively), he finds himself asking questions.

"Your sister," he says. "Queen Cersei. How did she die?"

Jaime gives him a sad smile.

"Robert didn't kill her, if that's what you're worried about," he says. "Believe me, king or not, he wouldn't still be alive if he had. Besides, he might be a drunken oaf, but even he wouldn't be fool enough to think he could murder Tywin Lannister's daughter and get away with it."

"Oh." Of course, Robert wouldn't have to have actually murdered Cersei for her to have died of him, but he thinks Ser Jaime means it all – all the ways Bran's feared Jo could die at Robert's hand – none of them happened to the queen before her.

"No, one day there was just a lump on her breast. A year later she was gone." He pauses and takes a long drag of his ale. "She thought it was nothing, of course she did, she was always too proud to think mere illness could destroy her. But then she just got sicker and sicker. At the end – we always thought we were the same person in two bodies, but even I couldn't understand a word she said. She laughed a lot. She talked about her children, and our brother Tyrion, and she spoke some strange words I couldn't make any sense of; they could have been another language, could have been pure nonsense, I don't know."

Bran feels overwhelmed by pity, and wishes he could say something, but he's not sure Ser Jaime would take that well.

"It was the worst moment of my life, watching her waste away and not being able to do a thing to help her. Robert didn't care at all, of course, if anything he was relieved," Jaime says. "She always said – we entered this world together, and we'd leave it together. And yet she's gone, and I'm still here."

Bran still doesn't know what to say, but he reaches across and squeezes Ser Jaime's shoulder gently, in comfort. That surprises the man, seemingly, but he smiles.

Then he's dragged out of the moment from by a scream. Jo. She's in the maester's chambers, halfway across the Red Keep, and it must hurt a lot if he can hear her from here. Of course, it always hurts, he still remembers how Mother screamed when she bore Rickon, but–

"She'll be alright, lad," Ser Jaime tells him. He scowls.

"You can't know that." Because it's always a risk, his mother's mother died in the birthing bed, and a babe born between brother and sister can't be too healthy, and gods, if it was his babe that killed her, what a joke that would be–

"No, but someone ought to tell it to you," says Ser Jaime. He squeezes Bran's shoulder in return. "There's nothing you can do right now, Ser Brandon. You have to wait."

The man's right, damn him. Bran sighs, and reaches once more for his ale.

* * *

When the babe is placed in her arms, Jo's first thought is _it worked_. She half-expected the thing to be born twisted, mutant, with three hands and four toes, or for whatever part of the dragon lays in her to have risen up, perhaps woken by the fact she was doing just what the Targaryens did, and left her with another silver-haired babe to explain away. But no. The child in her arms is whole and healthy, giggling merrily and grasping for her teat, with deep grey eyes and a tiny bit of black hair.

"It's a girl, your grace," says one of the maids.

Jo is too exhausted to try and tell whether that's better or worse than having a son, and so she merely says: "Oh."

Robert doesn't return until a couple of days later, and she knows he only comes to see her out of obligation. Still, she smiles when he lays the pelt of a fox he shot in front of her. She could make a babe's blanket out of that.

Speaking of babes.

She passes the girl to Robert, and her heart sinks as his face remains fixed in indifference. _This changes nothing. He doesn't care about this one any more than the others._

But then the babe wakes up, lets out a happy cry and reaches up towards the man holding her. And Jo knows Robert can see – those Stark grey eyes, the eyes he once saw in her and decided she would be his bride. She watches as a look of absolute wonder crosses his face.

He looks between the babe and her, and suddenly he's walking to Jo's side – for a moment she's terrified, she thinks, somehow he knows, and he's about to beat her to death right here in this bed – but then he leans over, her brother's bastard still in his arms, his huge gut almost squashing her, and he kisses her brow.

Perhaps she'd rather he have hit her.

When he stands up again, he sniffs, as if he's holding back a sob. "They say it's a girl," he says. "What have you named her?"

"I – I haven't, your grace." Truth be told, she's been too tired to do much more than feed the girl and sleep.

Robert nods, and then looks into those grey eyes once more. And Jo knows, she just knows what he's going to say.

"Lyanna."

* * *

Princess Lyanna Baratheon's naming ceremony is one of the grandest occasions King's Landing has seen in years. No-one seems to understand why; Bran hears all sorts of whispers about how when the Princess Daeria was born, the king wouldn't even let anyone see her, and they thought the girl must have been born with some deformity, with wings or a tail, or three heads.

But they can see Daeria now, a beautiful little girl who's only just mastered walking, and is clinging to Anna's hand just in case. Anna looks like she wants to be holding Betta's hand, but Betta is busy, resplendent in her purple and gold gown as she holds little Lyanna's swaddling clothes, whilst the babe is bathed in seven oils. Robert casually mussed her hair as he approached the altar, not even looking at her, and oh how that made Betta grin.

Bran wonders if, now he's not so ashamed of his daughters to let anyone see them, he might let Jo send them to foster with her family. With men who might actually learn to love them.

Bran watches it all from a balcony, far away from his own daughter, and once the babe is officially named Lyanna Baratheon in the sight of the Seven, he hears someone coming up behind him. "They say King Robert's going to finally make you a member of the Kingsguard," says Jaime Lannister, and of course it's him. "Now the Starks have given him what he always really wanted, your family has to be rewarded."

He always wanted to be appointed to the Kingsguard on his own merit, not just for his family name, but for something he actually did. Of course, he supposes he is being appointed because of something he did. It's just Robert doesn't know about it.

Across the room Bran spies Prince Joffrey, watching the proceedings with a look of absolute, undisguised hatred. Robert looks at Lyanna with more love than he's ever looked at all his other children combined. _He'd kill her if he could_. Of course, Joffrey can't kill his (alleged) sister, not while his father still rules. But Robert isn't a young man anymore, and he's never taken care of his health. A shudder runs down Bran's spine. What will happen when Robert dies?

Robert might love Lyanna better than his other children, but he couldn't disinherit his firstborn to leave his crown to his youngest child, to his daughter. He wouldn't get away with it.

But a son perhaps–

Bran stares Joffrey's golden hair, he remembers how Jaime told him of the lump on Cersei's breast, and opts against mentioning any of this to him.

He is still there, incidentally. "You know, you did the right thing," he says. Bran finally turns around and faces him. "No-one else will ever say you did. If anyone knew, they'd be disgusted. They'd say you dishonoured your king, dishonoured your house, dishonoured your sister." Ser Jaime smirks. "And you did. But you also saved her life."

Bran says nothing, and Jaime Lannister merely chuckles as he walks away. Bran looks out across the Great Sept of Baelor, shining in the light of the Seven-Pointed Star, and thinks of Father.


End file.
